Federal judge rules against hard-hit West Virginia community in opioid trial

The distributors have denied wrongdoing and have said the painkillers they shipped were prescribed by licensed doctors and filled by pharmacies. They argued they had no way of telling that those prescriptions were not legitimate and that any of the drugs may have been funneled to the black market.

The arguments by lawyers for the distributors resonated with the judge, who ruled that the plaintiffs did not prove the conduct by the companies was unreasonable, a key element to establishing a public nuisance case. He found that the conduct of the companies could not be connected to the harm suffered by the communities. Finally, he ruled that the plaintiffs failed to devise a detailed abatement plan outlining how the communities would spend any money they received if they did prevail at trial.

The increase of pills going to West Virginia was due in part, he said, to “good faith dispensing” as well as the rise in product thresholds set by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“The opioid crisis has taken a considerable toll on the citizens of Cabell County and the City of Huntington. And while there is a natural tendency to assign blame in such cases, they must be decided not based on sympathy, but on the facts and the law,” Faber wrote in his ruling. “In view of the court’s findings and conclusions, the court finds that judgment should be entered in defendants’ favor.”

In the end, Faber ruled that public nuisance statutes had been wrongly applied in the case.

“The extension of the law of nuisance to cover the marketing and sale of opioids is inconsistent with the history and traditional notions of nuisance,” he wrote.

The decision comes nearly a year after lawyers for the defendants and the plaintiffs rested their case in a bench trial held before the judge last summer. Following the trial, the three distributors finalized a $21 billion national deal with a vast majority of states, counties and cities to resolve most of the lawsuits against them. Communities in West Virginia were not part of that deal. Lawyers involved in the case said they were surprised by the amount of time it took Faber to hand down his decision.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they are considering an appeal.

“We are deeply disappointed personally and for the citizens of Cabell County and the City of Huntington,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in a statement. “We felt the evidence that emerged from witness statements, company documents, and extensive datasets showed these defendants were responsible for creating…