CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced state settlements with Walmart and CVS to resolve lawsuits claiming the pharmacies failed to maintain effective controls as a distributor and dispenser against diversion that contributed to the oversupply of opioids in the state.
The total of the two settlements is more than $147 million. Walmart settled for $65,070,000 and CVS for $82.5 million. Morrisey said the CVS deal comes with a 2.25 percent Most Favored Nation protection which guarantees West Virginia won’t be prejudiced by a future national settlement.
“These settlements won’t bring back the lives lost from the opioid epidemic, but these and other settlements will hopefully provide significant help to those affected the most by this crisis in our state,” Morrisey said during a September 21 press conference. “This development also avoided a costly and lengthy trial and at the end of the day,
"West Virginia will have the highest per capita settlement results in the nation fighting for our people.”
Last month, Morrisey announced a settlement with Rite Aid for nearly $30 million. All three companies were part of a larger trial involving other pharmacies. Litigation against Walgreens and Kroger continues before the state Mass Litigation Panel with a trial date on June 5, 2023.
The lawsuits allege the pharmacies’ contribution to the oversupply of prescription opioids in the state have caused “significant losses through their past and ongoing medical treatment costs, including for minors born addicted to opioids, rehabilitation costs, naloxone costs, medical examiner expenses, self-funded state insurance costs and other forms of losses to address opioid-related afflictions and loss of lives.”
The money from all opioid settlements will be distributed under the terms of the West Virginia First Memorandum of Understanding. Announced in mid-February, the MOU is an agreement with the state on how future settlement dollars would be used to abate the opioid crisis throughout the state. It contains a comprehensive plan to use those funds to abate the massive problems caused by the flood of opioids into West Virginia.
Morrisey said all 55 counties and 217 of the 229 cities and towns in the state have signed on to the West Virginia First MOU. With the trial against Walgreen's and Kroger in June, as well as two bankruptcies still in the court system, Morrisey said he expects the state to receive more than a billion dollars from opioid litigation before all is said and done.
On September 19, the state Mass Litigation Panel continued the pharmacy case until June 5, 2023. The MLP judges also gave Morrisey until the end of this month to add any additional defendants to the case.
MLP Chairman Alan Moats made those decisions during a status hearing. After September 30, the state can no longer add any additional defendants to the case.
Moats said last month’s lawsuit Morrisey’s office filed against Kroger spurred the deadline. Moats called it “a waste of judicial resources” to have multiple trials in the case. He also questioned why the AG’s office waited until a month before the start of the trial to sue Kroger.
“Judge (Derek) Swope and I are not puppets for somebody to be a puppet master to control our movements,” Moats said, according to an HD Media story about the hearing. “That’s not our function.”
Swope also is an MLP judge hearing the case. He and Moats added Kroger to the case alleging the pharmacies violated the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act and played a key role in the state’s opioid epidemic by dispensing opioids and acting as wholesale distributors by taking orders from their own pharmacies. The defendants also are accused of filing suspicious opioid orders.