Oklahoma Judge Orders Johnson & Johnson to Pay More Than $572 Million for Opioid Role

An Oklahoma judge has ruled that Johnson & Johnson must pay more than $572 million for the role they played in Oklahoma’s opioid epidemic, which officials say has killed over 6,000 Oklahomans over nearly 20 years.

The state’s Attorney General, Mike Hunter, stated that Johnson & Johnson, as well as their pharmaceutical subsidiary (Janssen) pushed painkiller opioids to doctors while simultaenously downplaying their addictiveness, dating all the way back to the 1990s. According to the state, this attempt to increase sales qualifies as a “public nuisance” that has killed thousands of their residents over the past two decades.

Johnson & Johnson disputed the state’s characterization, while their attorney (John Sparks) said that the application of the public nuisance law had been misinterpreted, and said it was previously limited to legal disputes over property or public spaces. The exact total the company is required to pay is $572,102,028.

The ruling may also establish a precedent for pending opioid cases against a number of pharmaceutical companies who may instead opt to settle.

This past March Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, reached a $270 million settlement with the Oklahoma attorney general’s office. Another company, Teva Pharmaceutical, settled with the state for $85 million just days before going to trial. Despite shelling out those large figures, both companies maintain they did nothing wrong.

Hunter had been pushing for Johnson & Johnson to pony up $17 billion to the state, which would then be allocated for addiction treatment and overall prevention over the course of the next three decades. As the trial waged on, Hunter said Johnson & Johnson, as well as other similar companies, tried to rush out a “magic pill” to bank quick profits while ignoring the scientifically established danger of opiods.