Opioid manufacturers sued for fraud by Missouri and Ohio

front organizations, which has fueled Ohio’s opioid epidemic.

The remedies sought by the Ohio suit are more extensive than those sought by the Missouri suit. The Ohio suit not only seeks to recover monetary damages for money spent by the state on the opioid crisis and compensation for consumers who paid for unnecessary prescriptions. Additional remedies sought include an injunction to prevent the five companies from continuing with their misrepresentative marketing as well as a declarative judgment that recognizes the actions of the companies as illegal.

In 2016, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman settled a similar suit against Endo Health Solutions over marketing of the narcotic painkiller Opana ER. According to the terms of the settlement, Endo agreed to stop making misleading and false claims about their drug and to create a program that would protect against marketing opioids to prescribers who were engaged in abuse.