Ocean County joins federal lawsuit against pharmaceutical industry over opioid crisis

TOMS RIVER - Ocean County will join hundreds of cities, towns and county governments across the United States in a federal lawsuit against some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world over America’s epidemic of opioid abuse.

Without comment on Wednesday evening, the Board of Freeholders approved a resolution authorizing that a complaint be filed on its behalf in the National Prescription Opiate Litigation multidistrict litigation, MDL 2804. The vote was 4-to-0.

The lawsuit alleges that the manufacturers of prescription opioids grossly misrepresented the risks of long-term use for patients with chronic pain, and that distributors failed to properly monitor suspicious orders of those prescription drugs — all of which contributed to the current crisis.

In 2017, Toms River, Brick and Berkeley moved forward with similar litigation — although it was not immediately clear whether those municipalities were part of the same lawsuit.

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that “the litigation has ballooned to 1,548 federal court cases, brought on behalf of cities and counties, 77 tribes, hospitals, union benefit funds, infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome and others — in total, millions of people. With a potential payday amounting to tens of billions of dollars, it has become one of the most complicated and gargantuan legal battles in American history.”

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After the meeting, Freeholder Director Virginia E. Haines explained that the litigation would not cost county taxpayers a dollar — the law firm representing the county would take about 20 percent of whatever fraction Ocean County was entitled to from whatever judgment or settlement may be reached in the case.

In the event of such a judgment or settlement, Haines said she would advocate that Ocean County use its share of the money to fund long-term drug rehabilitation care in the county for residents who cannot afford the cost and whose health insurance does not cover long-term treatment.

“I feel like we need to put a lot more money into rehab facilities,” Haines said. “Right now, it’s 14 days unless you have insurance. But you really need nine months to a year to really get full treatment — that’s what I feel is important.”

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ABC News reported Friday that the number of public entities which joined the lawsuit had reached about 1,800 last week  — they included Bergen County, New York’s Albany County, as well as Baton Rouge, Louisiana and major cities such as Atlanta and Phoenix.

“The federal bundle of cases accuses opioid manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson, of aggressively marketing the drugs while misleading doctors and the public about how addictive they are,” ABC News reported on its website. “They also accuse distributors, like McKesson, of moving huge quantities of the painkillers without alerting authorities, and accuse pharmacies like CVS Health and Walgreens of selling large amounts of the pills to patients.”

The network reported that a potential settlement in the case could reach about $100 billion in total.

Ocean County has consistently been one of the counties in New Jersey hardest hit by the scourge of opioid addiction and overdose deaths.

In the video above, Toms River mom Holly Santore tells her riveting story about breaking her own opioid addiction.

In 2016, Ocean County had the second-highest total and rate of overdose deaths of any county in the state. Only Essex County, the most populous in the state, had more deaths and only Atlantic County had a higher rate of fatal overdoses per capita.

In Ocean County, between 2013 and 2016, 576 people died of suspected overdoses, according to state records.

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Erik Larsen has covered politics, crime and unusual events at the Jersey Shore for more than 20 years. Contact him at 732-682-9359, elarsen@gannettnj.com or on Twitter at @Erik_Larsen.