CHARLESTON – As the landmark federal opioid trial nears the end of its third week, testimony focused on Cardinal Health’s acknowledgement and regulations related to excessive controlled substance ordering.
The City of Huntington and Cabell County filed suit against three pharmaceutical distribution companies – AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson – in 2017 seeking to hold the companies accountable for their alleged part in the opioid epidemic by sending more than 540,000 opioids each month to independent and chain pharmacies – excluding hospitals and/or hospital pharmacies – located in Cabell County.
On May 20, Michael Fuller, one of the lawyers representing Cabell County, resumed questioning of Michael Mone´, Cardinal Health s former vice president of anti-diversion. Mone´, a licensed pharmacist and lawyer, was employed by the distributor between 2006 and 2012 starting with Cardinal’s subdivision, Medicine Shoppe.
CHARLESTON – As the landmark opioid trial continues, lawyers brought in a former AmerisourceBergen’s sales executive to ask what he knew about more than 32 million prescription pain pills being shipped to Huntington and the rest of Cabell County over an eight-year span.
The City of Huntington and the Cabell County Commission sued three of the nation’s top pharmaceutical distribution companies – AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson – in 2017 seeking compensation over claims the companies helped fuel the opioid epidemic by sending more than 81 million controlled substances to the county between 2006 and 2014.
On May 19, defense attorney Eric Kennedy called Michael Perry, a retired AmerisourceBergen (ABDC) sales executive of about 40 years. Perry did direct sales that included all pharmaceuticals and other-the-counter medications to pharmacies with territories varying in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Perry testified that he had roughly 65-
CHARLESTON – As the federal trial against three major opioid distributors continued, data showing pharmacies in Huntington and Cabell County were ordering well above the national average of controlled substances, some ordering more than five times the national average.
Cabell County and the City of Huntington sued the three largest pharmaceutical distribution companies – AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson Corp. – in 2017 claiming the companies were largely responsible for the opioid crisis after the companies shipped more than 81 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to the county of just 100,000 residents between 2006 and 2014.
At the start of the May 18 testimony, officials from AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health objected to the number of documents the plaintiffs were presenting for possible use during examination the previous evening, stating it was unfair that the plaintiffs did not give a subset list of the known documents to be used during questi
CHARLESTON – During the third day of a federal trial against three major opioid distributors, lawyers for the City of Huntington and Cabell County sought to make the case that the ongoing drug crisis was predictable, as well as tied to the use of prescription painkillers.
On May 5, attorneys called David Courtwright, a historian of opioid use and drug policy, as well as Dr. Rahul Gupta, who was West Virginia’s health officer and commissioner of the state’s Bureau for Public Health from 2015-2018, to testify in the bench trial at the Charleston federal courthouse.
Gupta testified, at one point, that there was not “one iota of doubt” that prescription drug use led to illegal drug use. Defendants have said there is no proof of a direct causal link and objected to his testimony dozens of times.
CHARLESTON – A historian of opioid use and drug policy testified, in a federal trial against three major opioid distributors Wednesday, about three principal opioid epidemics that preceded the ongoing crisis.
The City of Huntington and Cabell County sued the “Big Three” drug distributors – McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health – in 2017 over their role in the overdose crisis, after more than 80 million doses of the drugs were sent to the area in an eight-year period.
Wednesday is the third day in the bench trial at the Charleston federal courthouse. Farrell | farrell.law
Under questioning from plaintiffs lawyer Paul Farrell Jr., David Courtwright, who wrote The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business, said the first epidemic, in the late 1900s, came from widespread medicinal use of opioids.