Oklahoma to Refile Opioid Litigation Against Distributors in State Court

Oklahoma’s Attorney General dismissed the state’s opioid lawsuit against distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen three weeks after the suit was moved to federal court — but said he will now file separate suits against each of the companies in a state court.

AG Mike Hunter filed a single suit against the three distributors in the Cleveland County District Court in January for allegedly “pumping massive and unreasonable quantities of opioids” into the state and ignoring warning signs of suspiciously large orders.

The District Court had previously ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay $465 million for its role in the opioid epidemic. But the three distributors succeeded in getting the case moved to an Oklahoma federal court, which Hunter said was done to have “the state’s case buried with the thousands of others” in multi-district litigation in Ohio.