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May 16, 2022
A Stanford University professor told a judge Monday that three pharmacy chains should pay a small fraction of the roughly $875 million that two Northeast Ohio counties seek for the role a jury found the pharmacies played in the opioid crisis, arguing that the plaintiffs' experts botched some calculations.
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May 12, 2022
A former Walgreens pharmacist felt pressured to "fill, fill, fill" prescriptions while working at a pace that made her fear making fatal errors, a California federal judge heard in recorded testimony Thursday in a multibillion-dollar bellwether trial over claims Walgreens and others illegally fueled San Francisco's opioid epidemic.
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May 11, 2022
The increasing numbers of opioids ordered by Walgreens pharmacies after 2010 felt like an uncontrollable "ticking time bomb," a former warehouse manager for the company said in recorded testimony screened Wednesday at a bellwether trial over claims the drugstore giant and others illegally fueled San Francisco's opioid epidemic.
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May 11, 2022
An opioid trial to determine remedies after a jury verdict against CVS, Walgreens and Walmart commenced colorfully and combatively Tuesday as plaintiffs counsel floated metaphors involving spaghetti and cake, pharmacies encountered judicial pushback when challenging a key expert, and former jurors took Law360 behind the scenes of their deliberations.
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May 10, 2022
The medical director overseeing San Francisco's health programs for the city's homeless population compared their "catastrophic" number of opioid deaths to the 1990s AIDS epidemic during testimony Tuesday in a bellwether federal trial over claims Walgreens, Allergan, Teva and Anda illegally fueled the public health crisis.
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May 09, 2022
A Stanford addiction expert who's testified in numerous trials brought by governments blaming drugmakers and others for the opioid epidemic testified Monday in San Francisco that doctors, pharmacists and patients were exposed to a "massive misinformation campaign that downplayed the risks and overstated the benefits" of the addictive painkillers.
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May 06, 2022
America's biggest pharmacy chains are poised for a pivotal trial at the center of multidistrict opioid litigation and the opioid crisis itself, aiming to avert a giant judgment and an enormous expansion of their broader liability in thousands of cases that are suddenly threatening to spiral out of control.
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April 27, 2022
The California federal judge presiding over a multibillion-dollar bellwether bench trial on San Francisco's claim that Walgreens, Teva, Allergan and Anda illegally fueled its opioid crisis said Wednesday the trial will proceed despite individuals from both sides testing positive for COVID-19, calling it "an important case for everybody."
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April 27, 2022
Two days of opening statements in San Francisco's opioid crisis trial featured impassioned assertions about the pharmaceutical industry's role in rampant drug abuse, but a Foley & Lardner attorney stole the show with invective so intense that he cautioned the judge against ignoring it as "overheated hyperbole" from an overzealous advocate.
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April 26, 2022
Drugmakers Teva and Allergan deflected blame for San Francisco's opioid crisis in opening statements of a multibillion-dollar bellwether bench trial Tuesday, saying they're "small fish" responsible for a "minuscule portion" of the city's opioids, and pointing to bankrupt Purdue Pharma as the true culprit.