By Amelia Pape
The Ogdensburg City Council unanimously voted on March 26 to join a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies and physicians who allegedly used fraudulent and aggressive tactics to market prescription opioids, the latest in a string of litigations of its kind.
Representing the city is the law firm Napoli Shkolnik, PLLC. The firm says that it plans to argue that pharmaceutical companies should pay for the financial damages taken on by cities and counties affected by increased addiction rates.
According to the Watertown Daily News, Ogdensburg City Councilor Daniel E. Skamperle strongly supported the lawsuit at the city council meeting. He says that “the government itself allowed the companies to market the products to citizens, to create the crisis, and then the same companies reveal they have an antidote which they turn around and sell via taxpayer dollars to the government.” He believes that the government should be held accountable as it did not enforce the laws and had no standards for marketing.
SLU students, Ogdensburg and other St. Lawrence County residents have encountered this over-prescription and under-selling of risks in their hometowns. One such student, Sadie Lingelbach-Pierce, was prescribed opioids once for a broken leg, a second time post-surgery on that same leg, and once again for her wisdom teeth surgery.
“For both the times I got it prescribed for my two different leg experiences, they told me how many to take each day,” she recalls, but she ended up not needing even close to what was prescribed. “I used what they prescribed for five or six days and then there were so many left because they said to take them as long as I needed them,” she says.
Another SLU student, Charlotte Reynolds, experienced what many young adults across the nation do when getting their wisdom teeth out. She was prescribed opioids and was recommended to take them, despite being in little to no pain. Reynolds felt the prescription unnecessary and never used the drugs. She also says that no risks, let alone long-term risks, of opioid use were discussed with her before or after surgery. “They gave me a piece of paper to sign with words on it—they didn’t say anything verbally about the risks,” she says.
An Ogdensburg resident has personally seen the damages to the town, not only financially but also to the residents’ wellbeing. He says that he sees people who are prescribed opioids and by the time their prescription is out, they are already addicted and looking for more pills. He knows of younger people taking pills and older people having already slipped into heroin use.
A similar case to Ogdensburg’s was filed in January of 2018 by St. Lawrence County, which is represented by Simmons Hanly Conroy, LLC. This alleges that the drug companies “sought to create a false perception in the minds of physicians, patients, health care providers and health care payors that using opioids to treat chronic pain was safe for most patients and that the drugs’ benefits outweighed the risks.” The suit also claims that this perception was created by a sophisticated civil conspiracy beginning with a marketing campaign in the late 1990s.
Stephen D. Button, St. Lawrence County Attorney, is working on this case. “St. Lawrence County, like many others across the state, has suffered great losses due to the defendants’ recklessness and negligence about the long-term effects of opioid use,” he says in the Simmons Hanly Conoly press release.
According to the St. Lawrence County lawsuit, at least 44 county residents have died from opioid use between the years 2003 and 2014. In 2014 there were 177 opioid-related emergency room admissions, a 108.2 percent increase since 2010, and 828 opioid-related hospital admissions. Furthermore, in 2016 over 640 St. Lawrence County residents were admitted into chemical dependence treatment programs.
Both the recent Ogdensburg suit and the 2018 St. Lawrence County suit emphasize the financial strain on the areas’ residents and employees. Some of these costs include human services, social services, court services, law enforcement services, medical examiner and health services.
The 2018 filing in St. Lawrence County follows similar action taken by Simmons Hanly Conroy on behalf of eight other New York counties: Broome, Dutchess, Erie, Orange, Schenectady, Seneca, Suffolk and Sullivan. Each lawsuit will be consolidated to state supreme court in Suffolk County Supreme Court and heard by State Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo.