The City of Seattle has filed suit against a long list of pharmaceutical companies, accusing them of contributing to the current opioid addiction crisis.

According to the Seattle opioid lawsuit, the City accuses drug manufacturers of  “unleash[ing] a healthcare crisis that has had far-reaching financial, social, and deadly consequences in the city of Seattle and across the nation.”

Brand name drugs such as OxyContin and Percocet and their generic equivalents oxycodone and hydrocodone are powerful opioid painkillers.

For many years, opioid painkillers were prescribed only for short-term acute pain or for end-of-life care because the drugs were known to be too addictive to be used for anyone fighting long-term pain.

Since the late 1990s, drug makers have been using “a marketing scheme designed to persuade doctors and patients that opioids can and should be used for chronic pain, a far broader group of patients much more likely to become addicted and suffer other adverse effects from the long-term use of opioids,” says the Seattle opioid lawsuit.

Drug companies spend millions of dollars to promote opioids as a treatment for chronic pain. The marketing scheme neglects to mention the possibility of addiction or minimizes such risks, according to the City’s complaint.

Seattle Opioid Lawsuit Blames Pill Mills for Deaths

The Seattle Pain Center, opened in 2008 by Dr. Frank D. Li, expanded into the cities of Renton, Everett, Tacoma, Olympia, Spokane, Poulsbo, and Vancouver. According to the City, at least 60 Seattle Pain Center patients died from 2010 to 2015, and at least 16 of those patients died shortly after filling an opioid prescription given by the Pain Center. Two other patients had serious health conditions that should have prevented them from receiving opioid prescriptions, the City says.

In July 2016, Washington’s Medical Quality Assurance Commission suspended Li’s medical license. According to the Seattle opioid lawsuit, the regulatory body found that even though Li claimed publicly to offer alternatives to narcotic pain medications, the Seattle Pain Center “sought out vulnerable chronic pain patients enrolled in Medicaid insurance and maintained these patients on opioid therapy by providing continuing prescriptions despite knowledge of medication abuse, diversion, and overdose.”

The Seattle opioid lawsuit alleges that pill mills such as the Seattle Pain Center should have been a predictable outgrowth of the drug manufacturers’ misleading promotional campaign, because the drug companies should have known people fighting chronic pain would end up addicted to drugs. The drug makers also should have realized that unscrupulous clinics such as the Seattle Pain Clinic would continuously prescribe the narcotics to keep the patients in the throes of addiction, alleges the Seattle opioid lawsuit.

As a result of the conduct of the drug companies and of the Seattle Pain Clinic, the City claims, Washington communities are overwhelmed with a public health crisis. The Seattle opioid lawsuit contends that researchers say Washington state had the third highest opioid abuse rate in the United States in 2010-2011.

The Seattle Opioid Lawsuit is Case No. 2:17-cv-01577 in the Superior Court of the State of Washington in and for King County.

In general, opioid addiction lawsuits are filed individually by each plaintiff and are not class actions.

Do YOU have a legal claim? Fill out the form on this page now for a free, immediate, and confidential case evaluation. The attorneys who work with Top Class Actions will contact you if you qualify to let you know if an individual opioid addictino lawsuit or opioid addiction class action lawsuit is best for you. Hurry — statutes of limitations may apply.

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