By Nate Raymond
Nov 5 (Reuters) – Albertsons must pay the state of Washington $900 million for helping fuel an opioid epidemic in the state by failing through its pharmacies to prevent the misuse of addictive painkillers, a state court judge ruled on Thursday.
King County Superior Court Judge Janet Helson in Seattle issued the decision after presiding over a non-jury trial in a lawsuit the state’s attorney general filed in 2022 against the grocery retailer, which operates in Washington mostly under the Safeway brand.
“The opioid crisis has really been an equal opportunity monster, bringing its destruction not only to urban areas, but to many small towns and rural areas throughout our state and impacting people in all walks of life,” she said.
Helson said the evidence presented during the nine-week trial showed that Albertsons played a substantial role in causing that epidemic by failing to maintain adequate systems to police against suspicious drug orders being fulfilled.
Helson said the company filled prescriptions from so-called “pill mill” doctors who were “prescribing ridiculous amounts of opioids to patients.” More than 5.5 million pills were dispensed as a result of prescriptions from five prescribers whose licenses were eventually suspended, she said.
Albertsons in a statement expressed disappointment in the ruling and said it was considering an appeal. It had denied wrongdoing and argued that pharmacists were not required to question the judgment of a patient’s doctor unless there was a compelling reason to suspect a prescription was illegitimate.
“We are proud of our pharmacists and their dedication to the patients and communities they serve, and we will continue to support our customers and communities across Washington through responsible pharmacy operations,” the company said.
THOUSANDS OF LAWSUITS
The lawsuit was one of thousands that states and local governments filed in recent years seeking to hold pharmaceutical companies, drug distributors and pharmacies responsible for a deadly opioid addiction epidemic that ravaged the country.
From 1999 to 2023, about 806,000 people in the US died from an opioid overdose, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overdose deaths have been on the decline since 2023, the CDC says.
The vast majority of the lawsuits have been resolved through large nationwide settlements that now total roughly $58 billion. Albertsons in April announced a $774 million settlement to resolve most of the cases against it nationwide.
But rather than joining that deal, the state of Washington opted to continue with its lawsuit in hopes of convincing Helson to find Albertsons liable for creating a public nuisance and violating the state’s consumer protection law.
The state’s attorneys argued that Albertsons put profits over safety, and overworked its own pharmacists to the point that they were powerless to investigate potential “red flags” in the prescriptions they filled.
The state alleged that Albertsons pharmacies from 2006 to 2022 unlawfully filled prescriptions for opioids more than 6.5 million times that had red flags signaling they could be diverted for illicit use.
The state at trial asked Helson to force Albertsons to pay $2.2 billion to address, or abate, the harms caused by the epidemic and require it to pay additional penalties as well.
Helson instead awarded $800 million to abate the epidemic and said that the company must pay an additional $100 million in penalties. If her abatement order is overturned on appeal, she said the penalties would rise to around $340 million, the amount she found the company would otherwise owe.
“This verdict can’t undo the devastating harms of the opioid crisis, but it will provide desperately needed resources to support treatment and prevent future crises,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)
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