A jury has been selected for Baltimore’s landmark trial against drug companies accused of contributing to the city’s opioid crisis by shipping more than 150 million painkillers here over 14 years.
Lawyers for the city and the drug distributors, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, agreed on six jurors and six alternates late Tuesday afternoon for the planned eight-week trial. Six jurors is standard for civil trials in Maryland.
About 150 city residents sat through the tedious jury selection process, which probed their feelings on opioids, illegal street drugs and Baltimore government.
“Have you or someone close to you ever struggled with drug or alcohol abuse, dependency, or addiction (not limited to prescription opioids?)” one question asked.
“Have you ever taken prescription opioids for longer than two weeks?” asked another.
Overdose deaths happen in Baltimore at a rate higher than in any other major American city, a joint New York Times/Baltimore Banner investigation found this year. Overdoses skyrocketed with the introduction of the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, which took over the illicit drug market in the 2010s.
Together, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen were responsible for nearly 60% of the painkillers that flooded Baltimore at the peak of opioid availability. The wholesale distributors, which acted as middlemen between drug manufacturers and the pharmacies and hospitals that dispensed opioids to patients, are accused of ignoring red flags indicating their pills were being misused.
More than half a billion legal painkillers flooded the Baltimore area between 2006 and 2019, according to a Washington Post database of federal drug data. While the Drug Enforcement Administration required pharmaceutical companies to watch for suspiciously large or unusual orders, the city’s lawsuit claims distributors ignored that responsibility and shipped millions of opioids with little concern for the damage they might do.
The companies deny liability for the crisis and have argued in court filings that the city’s opioid problem predated the influx of prescriptions. Baltimore had a well-documented heroin problem for decades before prescriptions for opioids accelerated, though the city made progress in reducing heroin overdoses in the early 2000s.
The companies also say they simply shipped FDA-approved opioids to licensed pharmacies after doctors prescribed the drugs, and had no control over what happened next.
The city’s lawsuit, with backing from experts, claims that more than 80% of opioid use disorder cases in Baltimore began with prescription opioids rather than heroin.
Even at this early stage, the massive scope of the trial is clear. A list of potential witnesses named 131 people, including Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley, current and former city health department officials, former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Dean Palmere, a former Baltimore police deputy commissioner who oversaw the disgraced Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF).
It’s not clear why Palmere may be called. In court filings, the drug companies have argued that Baltimore did not do enough to stop illegal drug diversion and pointed to the GTTF, members of which were accused of stealing and selling drugs, and to thefts from pharmacies that took place during the unrest following Freddie Gray’s death in 2015. Palmere also played a key role in police operations during the years that overdoses spiked in the city.
Opening statements in the closely watched trial are set for Wednesday morning in Baltimore City Circuit Court.
Many of the companies that Baltimore sued settled before trial. The city won more than $400 million in settlements from other opioid companies named in the lawsuit, including Walgreens, CVS, Cardinal Health and Johnson & Johnson.
That’s more than the entire state of Maryland received as part of a massive group settlement with Johnson & Johnson and the “big three” opioid distributors, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health. Maryland’s portion of the settlement, about $395 million, will be doled out over 18 years. Baltimore declined to participate in the settlement so it could proceed with its lawsuit.
The city could still settle with McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, now called Cencora, during the trial. The companies’ calculations could change based on what they see in the jury pool or how favorable the city’s evidence seems when presented in court.
Madeleine O’Neill is a Baltimore-based freelance journalist.
