By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK – A jury found Thursday that Teva Pharma Industries (NYSE:) Ltd fueled New York’s opioid addiction. It is a defeat for a company facing thousands more opioid-related lawsuits in the United States.

This verdict came after a New York state court trial that lasted nearly six months in a case filed by two counties and the state. It does not include damages. These will be decided later.

Teva requested a mistrial. A lawyer for the state had cited an incorrect statistic concerning opioid prescriptions as his closing argument. Teva could be under pressure to settle opioid claims with local and state governments if the verdict is upheld.

New York, Nassau, and Suffolk County had all accused Israel’s drugmaker of misleadingly marketing drugs that were used to fuel opioid addiction.

The focus was on Actiq, Fentora and other cancer pain medications made by Cephalon Inc (a company Teva purchased in 2011) as well generic opioids that Teva sells.

One parody video that Dr. Evil, the villain from Austin Powers films talks about how he promoted the drug for non-cancer pain. A second video, which was based upon a scene in the movie “A Few Good Men,” shows a Cephalon employee telling Tom Cruise that “can’t handle truth” about what Cephalon sales representatives must do to achieve quotas.

Teva claimed that it had complied to all federal and state regulations. It also denied deceptive advertising. Teva argued that the increase in prescriptions of opioids was due to changes in medical care, emphasizing pain management since the 1990s.

U.S. officials stated that the opioid crisis has led to almost 500,000 deaths from overdoses since 2000. In a November report, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that over 100,000 people had died due to drug overdoses between April 2021 and April 2021. The record is largely attributable to deaths related opioids like fentanyl.

This lawsuit, filed in New York by Native American Tribal governments, is just one of over 3,300 brought against drugmakers across the nation. They accuse them of minimising the addictiveness and distribution of pain medication distributors, as well as pharmacies, of failing to recognize that drugs could be diverted to illegal channels.

Others defendants in this case were also settled prior to or during the trial – distributors McKesson Corp(NYSE:), AmerisourceBergen Corp (NYSE:) Corp Cardinal Health Inc (NYSE:), and drugmakers Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:), Endo International (NASDAQ:) and AbbVie Inc (NYSE:). AbbVie reached a settlement for $200m at the close of the trial.

The settlement with J&J and the distributors was part of a nationwide deal worth up to $26 billion. Teva was not a part of that deal.

Teva had won in an earlier similar case. A California judge found that Teva, along with other drugmakers, were not liable for a lawsuit brought in by many counties.

Purdue Pharma was the maker of OxyContin and filed for bankruptcy in 2019. In 2019, the company hoped to end a series of lawsuits involving the painkiller. The deal would have the former owners, the Sackler families, pay $4.5 Billion in return for immunity. The deal was canceled by a federal judge Dec. 17, a decision that the company expected to appeal.