The defendants argued that they had done nothing but fill seemingly legitimate prescriptions for legally approved medication written by licensed and regulated doctors. In the Ohio case, Lake and Trumbull counties argued that the defendants-CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart-had ignored 'red flags' indicating that some of the prescriptions they filled were medically inappropriate. That chain includes decisions by state and federal regulators as well as actions by manufacturers, distributors, doctors, pharmacists, patients, black-market dealers who sell diverted pills, and nonmedical users who consume them. These cases, along with thousands of other lawsuits by state and local governments that blame legal drug suppliers for opioid-related addiction and deaths, ask courts to focus on one link in a long causal chain.

The verdict, which represents the first time that retailers have been held legally liable for the 'opioid crisis,' followed two recent rulings in which a California judge and the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected similar claims against drug manufacturers. A federal jury in Cleveland yesterday concluded that three major pharmacy chains had contributed to a 'public nuisance' in two Ohio counties caused by an oversupply of prescription opioids.

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