On Monday, a judge found that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) responsible for fueling Oklahoma’s opioid crisis. He has ordered the pharmaceutical company to pay $572 million, to provide a remedy for the devastation wrought by the epidemic on the state and its residents.
The landmark decision of Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman is the first to hold a drugmaker culpable for the fallout of years of liberal opioid dispensing that began in the late 1990s. It has sparked a nationwide epidemic of overdose deaths and addiction. Because of the incident, more than 400,000 people have died of overdoses from painkillers, heroin and illegal fentanyl since 1999.
“The opioid crisis has ravaged the state of Oklahoma and must be abated immediately,” Balkman said, reading part of his decision aloud from the bench on Monday afternoon.
“As a matter of law, I find that defendants’ actions caused harm, and those harms are the kinds recognized by [state law] because those actions annoyed, injured or endangered the comfort, repose, health or safety of Oklahomans,” he wrote in the decision.
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