It’s Sedgwick County vs. Big Pharma in multimillion-dollar painkiller lawsuit

Seeking to recoup millions of dollars of public costs of opioid addiction, Sedgwick County sued some of the nation’s biggest drug companies Thursday, accusing them of fraud, conspiracy and racketeering on prescription painkillers such as Lortab, OxyContin and fentanyl.

The lawsuit targets manufacturers and distributors of a wide menu of drugs, all of which are derived from opium poppies, the same active ingredient in street heroin.

According to a database run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were as many prescriptions written for opioid drugs in Sedgwick County in 2016 as there are people living here, the lawsuit alleges.

“The CDC’s statistics prove that the opioid prescription rates in Sedgwick County have exceeded any legitimate medical, scientific, or industrial purpose,” the lawsuit said.

That one-to-one ratio of prescriptions to people is about 33 percent higher than the national average, said Ryan Prochaska of the law firm Prochaska, Howell and Prochaska, which is representing the county in the litigation.

In some recent years, there were more opioid prescriptions written than there are people in the county, said his father and law partner, Brad Prochaska.

Obviously, not everyone in the county is taking opioid drugs, so the only plausible conclusion is that a small number of people are getting multiple prescriptions to feed their own addiction or sell to addicts, Brad Prochaska said.

And, he said the pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors have taken advantage and sold billions of dollars worth of pills that they knew or should have known were going to illicit use.

The defendants include some of the biggest manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and several subsidiaries and affiliated companies.

Johnson & Johnson is the largest on the list. Others include: Teva, Endo, Allergan, Janssen and Mallinckrodt. Some of the companies make brand-name pain killers, while others make generic versions of opioid drugs.

The lawsuit also names America’s “Big Three” drug wholesalers, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp.

In similar cases, industry executives have denied wrongdoing.

Companies involved in the Sedgwick County lawsuit have joined in an industry working group to try to address issues involved in misuse of their products and have produced educational materials for doctors and pharmacists on how to spot potential abusers.

“We believe the allegations in the lawsuits against our company are both legally and factually unfounded,” said Jessica Castles Smith, a spokeswoman for Janssen Pharmaceuticals, in a statement sent to The Eagle. “Janssen has acted in the best interests of patients and physicians with regard to its opioid pain medicines, which are FDA-approved and carry FDA-mandated warnings about possible risks on every product label.”

Teva also responded to The Eagle.

“We take a multi-faceted approach to this complex issue; we work to educate communities and healthcare providers on appropriate medicine use and prescribing, we comply closely with all relevant federal and state regulations regarding these medicines, and, through our R&D pipeline, we are developing non-opioid treatments that have the potential to bring relief to patients in chronic pain,” wrote Denise Bradley, the company’s vice president of corporate reputation.

“Teva also collaborates closely with other stakeholders, including providers and prescribers, regulators, public health officials and patient advocates, to understand how to prevent prescription drug abuse without sacrificing patients’ needed access to pain medicine,” the statement said.

But Sedgwick County’s lawsuit alleges the companies deceptively manipulated doctors at medical conferences, by hiring prominent and influential physicians to recommend opioid drugs to colleagues and to downplay the risk of addiction.

“They’ll have these doctors, called ‘key opinion leaders,’ saying how great (the drugs) are, how they can be used for any type of pain and if it’s legitimate pain, they are non-addictive,” Ryan Prochaska said.

If doctors reported signs of addiction in their patients, “They (the companies) will then say, oh, that’s pseudo-addiction. You need to give them more pills,” he said.

Attorneys general in Kansas and 40 other states are investigating opioid manufaturers and marketers.

A handful of states and dozens of local governments nationwide have already sued over opioid addiction costs. Sedgwick County’s lawsuit is expected to be combined with federal litigation in northern Ohio, the epicenter of the national opioid crisis, the lawyers said.

While larger firms will do most of the heavy legal lifting, the local attorneys will be working to quantify Sedgwick County’s costs to abate problems caused by prescription opioid abuse, the lawyers said.

There are direct costs, such as responding to overdose emergencies and providing treatment for addicted residents. And there are indirect costs, such as training and equipment for law enforcement and providing care and social services for the children of addicts, Brad Prochaska said.

“There’s all kinds of education that has to be implemented for doctors, county personnel, victims of families with addiction,” he said. “And then we also want in place certain guards so that the amount of pills distributed and what they’re distributed for is significantly reduced so we can stop the addiction.”

The county isn’t spending any money or doing any of the work on the lawsuit. The private lawyers will be paid a share of whatever the county may recover from the litigation.

This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 3:49 PM with the headline "It’s Sedgwick County vs. Big Pharma in multimillion-dollar painkiller lawsuit."