West Virginia trial puts spotlight on sprawling opioid cases

A corner of West Virginia wrenched by opioid addiction is getting the chance to argue in a courtroom that some of the corporate giants it blames for a public health crisis that left hundreds of people dead deserve to be held accountable.

The city of Huntington and surrounding Cabell County sued the nation's three largest opioid distributors No matter the outcome of the federal court trial that opened this month, the verdict is expected to resonate well beyond the industrial region.

The trial in West Virginia, as well as legal proceedings underway in California, could set the stage for resolutions to similar lawsuits brought by thousands of local governments across the United States. Opioid overdoses have been linked to the deaths of nearly 500,000 Americans since 2000 and reached a record of nearly 50,000 in 2019.

Yet as the sprawling litigation over the addiction epidemic progresses around the country, its trajectory is unlikely to mirror the one of the lawsuits that states brought against the tobacco industry during the 1990s. The landmark litigation over what cigarette companies knew about the health risks of smoking resulted in a few sweeping settlements that distributed money to nearly every state, while the opioid cases involve a variety of plaintiffs suing companies up and down the pharmaceutical chain in state and federal courts.

As a result, the lawsuits arising from the use of powerful prescription painkillers could evolve more like the litigation over the cancer risk linked to asbestos, which also involved many corporate players and ended up stretching on for decades. In addition to state and local governments, Native American tribes, hospitals and labor unions also filed opioid lawsuits.

The Huntington and Cabell County case could lead the distributors that filled orders for OxyContin, generic oxycodone...