New Jersey Consumer Fraud, FCA Claims Against Oxycontin Maker Can Proceed

A judge threw out the state of New Jersey’s claims that Purdue Pharma created a public nuisance, but allowed several of its charges that the company violated the False Claims Act and the CFA, the state’s consumer fraud law.

The lawsuit, filed last October, alleged Purdue, the producer of Oxycontin and other opioid prescription drugs, contributed to the opioid crisis through its marketing. This marketing, the state claimed, involved directly pitching prescribers, generating shoddy research to support the use of the products for chronic pain, and doctors and consumers through third parties operating as front groups.

In its motion to dismiss, Purdue argued that the state cannot bring a public nuisance claim over lawful products, and that several of the public-nuisance allegations were outside of the 10-year statute of limitations. In his decision, Judge Thomas M. Moore of the Superior Court of New Jersey ruled that the public-nuisance claims instead fell under the definition of a product liability action.