A bipartisan group of state attorneys general announced Friday morning that it had signed a $2.37 billion agreement in principle with drug company Allergan to resolve more than 2,500 opioid-related lawsuits filed by states, local governments and tribes in the United States. nationwide who have suffered during the ongoing opioid epidemic.
The company declined to comment, but a Friday quarterly report by Allergan’s parent company, AbbVie, characterized the amount as “a charge related to a possible settlement of lawsuits related to Allergan’s previous sales of opioid products.”
The proposed settlement is an accompanying agreement to a $4.25 billion deal announced in principle earlier in the week from Teva Pharmaceuticals. If a significant majority of states and communities sign up, the combined deal, when completed, could be worth $6.6 billion, lawyers familiar with the negotiations said. That is higher than a national settlement reached with Johnson & Johnson or an offer from Purdue Pharmaopioid manufacturers with much higher public profiles.
The deals are largely linked as Teva bought Allergan’s generics portfolio in 2016, including its significant opioid business. Teva made this week’s settlement partially conditional on Allergan reaching its own opioid liability deal.
“We’ve worked hard to get the best outcome for Americans harmed by the opioid crisis, and it’s worth taking another step in the right direction,” said Tom Miller, Iowa’s attorney general. whose office led the bipartisan group in negotiations with Allergan and Teva. “We will continue to make it a priority to hold manufacturers accountable while ensuring victims of this epidemic get the help they need.”
Unlike Teva’s deal, where plaintiffs can choose to receive a portion of the payout in drugs used to reverse drug overdoses and treat addiction rather than cash, Allergan’s offer is all cash with no product, according to lawyers familiar with the negotiations. Teva’s payments to states and communities would be paid in 13 years, while Allergan’s would be paid in six years. The amounts for both drug companies include settlement figures already struck with a handful of states and provinces in the past year.
Both Allergan and Teva sold both proprietary and generic opioid pain relievers. Attorneys for thousands of entities have argued that these manufacturers, like so many others, exaggerated the benefits of opioids to doctors and the public and downplayed the drugs’ addictive properties. In addition, while the companies are required to report suspicious orders to authorities, neither have done so, lawyers said.
Teva had said the possible agreement was not an admission of wrongdoing.
The deals still have a long way to go before the money actually starts flowing into communities. Issues such as allocation of funds, stricter monitoring of suspicious orders and the creation of a public repository of internal documents have yet to be resolved.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein commented on the arc of the opioid epidemic and the lawsuits that have resulted. “In 2020, nine North Carolinas died every day from an opioid overdose,” he said. “There is no amount of money that could ever recover such a loss. But there is hope for recovery, and our continued work to hold these companies accountable is giving people in this state the treatment and support they need to stay healthy.” And we’re still not done.”