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 The city of Seattle also filed a separate lawsuit against Purdue as
well as units of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Johnson &
Johnson, Endo International Plc and Allergan plc.
The lawsuit by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson accused
Purdue of deceptive marketing of OxyContin and convincing doctors
and the public that its drugs had a low-risk of addiction and were
effective for treating chronic pain.
He said he would be seeking to force Purdue to pay a "significant"
sum for engaging in marketing practices that downplayed the
addictiveness of its drugs, allowing it to earn billions of dollars
while fuelling the opioid crisis.
"I don't know how executives at Purdue sleep at night," Ferguson
told reporters.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue said in a statement it was
"deeply troubled" by the opioid crisis and that its U.S. Food and
Drug Administration-approved products account for just 2 percent of
all opioid prescriptions.
"We vigorously deny these allegations and look forward to the
opportunity to present our defense," Purdue said.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
opioids were involved in over 33,000 deaths in 2015, the latest year
for which data is available. The death rate has continued rising,
according to estimates.
The lawsuits followed a wave of cases against opioid manufacturers
and distributors by Louisiana, West Virginia, New Mexico, Oklahoma,
Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as
well as several cities and counties.
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Purdue and three executives pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal
charges related to the misbranding of OxyContin, which is used to
relieve pain, and agreed to pay a total of $634.5 million to resolve
a U.S. Justice Department probe.
That year, the privately held company also reached a $19.5 million
settlement with 26 states and the District of Columbia. It had
agreed in 2015 to pay $24 million to resolve a lawsuit by Kentucky.
In filing his lawsuit in King County Superior Court in Seattle on
Thursday, Ferguson said he was breaking off from an ongoing
multi-state probe by various attorneys general into companies that
manufacture and distribute opioids.
While Ferguson said looked forward to seeing its results, "we felt
we had a case ready to go."
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Susan Thomas and
Tom Brown)
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