The billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma LP were sued by New York state for allegedly triggering an addiction epidemic with their marketing of the Oxycontin painkiller, just two days after the company agreed to pay $270 million to settle similar claims by Oklahoma.
The amended complaint adds the embattled Sackler family to the state’s lawsuit against Purdue and its biggest competitors and distributors, including Johnson & Johnson and Cardinal Health Inc. New York says the defendants pushed doctors to issue prescriptions, lied about the risk of addiction and ignored red flags from suspicious pharmacies.
“Simply put, they put profit over patients,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday at a press conference in Manhattan announcing the new claims. The Sacklers “profited off the suffering, the death of New Yorkers.”
The suit in New York state court, which James said is the most extensive of its kind in the U.S., adds to the potentially massive legal liability that has led Purdue to threaten bankruptcy protection. Meanwhile, states and local governments have recently targeted the Sackler family’s wealth in an effort to recoup billions spent on the social costs of opioid addiction. More than 1,600 suits against opioid makers have been consolidated in Ohio, and other cases are pending in state courts.
“One of the manufacturing defendants -- Purdue -- undoubtedly tipped the first domino,” James, a Democrat who took office in January, said in the complaint. “The others quickly went in on the scheme to expand the opioids market through a predatory campaign of lies, payoffs and high-pressure sales tactics.”
The Sacklers are accused of manufacturing the crisis, a claim the family denied in a statement on Thursday.
“Expanding this baseless lawsuit to include former directors of Purdue Pharma is a misguided attempt to place blame where it does not belong for a complex public health crisis,” the family said. “We strongly deny these allegations, which are inconsistent with the factual record, and will vigorously defend against them.”
Among the details in James’s 258-page complaint are quoted remarks from the 1996 launch party for OxyContin, where former Purdue Chief Executive Officer Richard Sackler allegedly asked the audience to imagine a series of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, erupting volcanoes and blizzards.
“The launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” Sackler said, according to the complaint. “The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense and white.”
James, whose claims mirror those made in other lawsuits, calls the defendants “unrepentant” and lays out how each of the individuals and companies allegedly participated in a scheme that ballooned out of control. The defendants have denied wrongdoing.