The city of Baltimore decided to opt to receive $152 million in damages and abatement from McKesson and Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen) on Thursday evening.
The winnings bring Baltimore’s total haul from opioid manufacturers and distributors to about $580 million since the city decided to sue opioid companies on its own rather than sign on to a global settlement. The city would have gotten about $63 million from the global settlement.
This most recent payout is disappointing, yet historic for Baltimore. The city won its civil lawsuit against the two companies in November, when a jury found the companies liable for their role in the opioid epidemic.
The jury awarded Baltimore $266 million in damages and the city subsequently submitted a $5 billion abatement plan to the court for its consideration. Abatement is how much money the city thinks it will take to fix the issue caused by the company and the amount is decided by the judge.
In June, Maryland Circuit Court Judge Lawerence Fletcher-Hill stated the damages the jury awarded were too high and reduced the amount to $52 million.
“The jury’s award of damages reflects a conclusion that the unreasonable conduct of these two distributor Defendants creates legal responsibility for 97% of the entirety of the harm experienced by the City for the public nuisance from 2011 through 2029 in the future,” Fletcher-Hill wrote. “The Court concludes that the extent of the liability imposed cannot be justified by the evidence presented at trial.”
This month, Fletcher-Hill decided that the city was only entitled to $100 million in abatement.
The city had the option to take the $152 million total or to retry the case.
“While this amount is lower than the jury awarded us, this award still dwarfs the original amount the city would have received, had we not brought this separate litigation on behalf of our city. This is also the only successful jury verdict and only successful judgement against either of these companies,” Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement. “Though we disagree with aspects of the ruling, we appreciate the Court’s work. We thank the six members of the jury for carefully evaluating this case after weeks of testimony and holding these distributors accountable.”
Baltimore is still set to receive settlements from Johnson & Johnson and the Sackler family, however those remain undisclosed for now.
The city set up an overdose response office and board to oversee how the total funding will be spent.
The money will be held in a trust where it will earn interest as the city spends it.
To date, Baltimore has about $87 million earmarked to give out for addiction services and harm reduction.
That process is largely just beginning.
