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 Distributors McKesson Corp, AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health
Inc along with J&J had until Friday to decide whether enough cities
and counties nationally had opted to join the landmark settlement to
justify moving forward with it.
The deal aims to resolve more than 3,000 lawsuits largely by state
and local governments seeking to hold the companies responsible for
an opioid abuse crisis that has led to hundreds of thousands of
overdose deaths over the last two decades..
The distributors on Friday said there was "sufficient participation"
to proceed. Charles Lifland, an attorney for J&J, in a letter on
Thursday reviewed by Reuters told lawyers for the states and local
governments it also had determined there had been a "sufficient
resolution" of the claims.
The announcement paves the way for the companies to begin making
payments to the governments in April, money that officials say will
be used to fund treatment and other programs aimed at addressing the
health crisis.
"Because of the money, there will be people alive next year who
otherwise would have died," North Carolina Attorney General Josh
Stein, a lead settlement negotiator, said in an interview.
The lawsuits accuse the distributors of lax controls that allowed
massive amounts of addictive painkillers to be diverted into illegal
channels, and that drugmakers, including J&J, downplayed the risk of
addiction when marketing the pain medicines.
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 The proposed settlement, which
was first announced in July, calls for the
distributors to pay up to $21 billion over 18
years and J&J to pay up to $5 billion over nine
years.
Most states are settling. All four companies
continue to face claims in Alabama, Oklahoma,
Washington and West Virginia. New Hampshire
declined to settle with J&J as well.
Peter Mougey, a plaintiffs' lawyer at the law
firm Levin Papantonio involved in the
negotiations, said ultimately over 7,000 local
governments opted into the settlement. "Almost
40 states are 99% or higher," he said of
participation within the states.
It is likely the biggest, though not the last,
settlement to result from opioid litigation.
This month, the Sackler family owners of
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma in its bankruptcy
proposed a revised settlement worth up to $6
billion that would resolve claims the company
fueled the epidemic. Drugmaker Mallinckrodt this
month won bankruptcy court approval for a $1.7
billion settlement.
Other drugmakers like Israel-based Teva
Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd as well as major
pharmacy chains remain in litigation. Talks with
those companies are ongoing, Stein said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Manas
Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb
Chakrabarty and Jason Neely)
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