On Friday, drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors confirmed they would pay $24.5 billion to end the lawsuits against them.

But many other procedures are still in progress.

“We filed a complaint in 2014 because we were concerned about how manufacturers were pushing the use of opiates so aggressively that it was leading to abuse, with a devastating impact on communities,” says James Williams. , Chief Legal Officer for Santa Clara County, California.

The aim was twofold, he explains to AFP: to make companies responsible for their actions and to recover money.

Because of the opioid crisis, the county has had to spend more on its hospitals, mental health programs, social services, homelessness, and more.

The county, along with other communities, lost its trial lawsuit last year against manufacturers, but appealed.

At the same time, he participates in negotiations with companies wishing to settle the lawsuits.

Will the money donated be enough?

"It will never make up for all the people who have died in the country from opiates," replies Mr. Williams.

And "the billions of dollars provided for in these agreements represent little in comparison to the needs", he adds.

Avoid the example of tobacco

The United States has already seen the big lawsuits related to tobacco, asbestos, pesticides, but in the opiate crisis, everything seems to take on a greater scale.

"The plaintiffs are not only massive in number but also in variety," notes Mark Lanier, a lawyer suing chain pharmacies: states, counties, cities, Native American tribes, hospitals, groups representing for example the babies born premature.

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors have confirmed they will pay $24.5 billion to end lawsuits against them Mark RALSTON AFP/Archives

Users who have become addicted, or their relatives, have initiated individual proceedings, but the companies have responded by placing the blame on the addicts and their point of view has often prevailed.

In the name of the public interest, communities have taken over.

If so many entities have decided to engage in combat, it is partly so as not to repeat what happened with tobacco, notes Christine Minhee, a lawyer holding a site listing the various procedures.

Following an agreement in 1998 with the big tobacco companies, the sector undertook to pay approximately 246 billion dollars over 25 years, while continuing to pay significant taxes.

But less than 3% of those funds go to fund programs to prevent smoking or help smokers quit, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has calculated.

The vast majority of the money goes into general budgets, those used to build roads, for example.

Communities "no longer trusted the states to redistribute the money," says Ms. Minhee.

For Alexandra Lahav, a lawyer at the University of Connecticut, the functioning of the American legal system has also weighed: if the States are represented by prosecutors, paid by the public service, most communities are represented by lawyers "who have an interest financially to prosecution".

Over-prescription

On the other side of the bar, the defendants are also particularly numerous.

Opioid manufacturers like Purdue or Johnson & Johnson, which are accused of having encouraged doctors to over-prescribe painkillers even though they knew their addictive potential.

Some have gone bankrupt and their case is being played out in specific jurisdictions.

The opioid crisis in the United States John SAEKI AFP/Archives

The distributors of opiates were also targeted, then the pharmacies which sold them to patients.

For practical reasons, more than 3,000 complaints have been grouped together before a single judge, Dan Polster, in Ohio.

While pushing for agreements between parties, he launched a few lawsuits, like trial balloons.

Lawyer Steven Skikos participated in the talks that resulted in the payment of $665 million to Native American tribes, particularly affected by the opiate crisis.

Under the impetus of the judge, who set up specific committees, the plaintiffs were able to quickly present a common front, explains to AFP this accustomed to lawsuits against medical companies.

"There's no doubt that it's a very complicated business," he said.

But the legal questions remain, as always, the same: "are the defendants responsible? to what extent did they cause damage?"

© 2022 AFP