OKLAHOMA CITY — Big pharma is facing a major test in a small courthouse 20 miles south of here: the first trial at which a jury could decide whether drug companies bear responsibility for the nation’s opioid crisis.
Thousands of cities, counties, Native American tribes and others have filed lawsuits up and down the opioid supply chain, advancing various allegations of culpability for the crisis that began with widespread abuse of powerful painkillers. Most of the cases have been consolidated in a major federal action in Cleveland. But as that case lags, smaller state cases like the one in Oklahoma are moving quickly to hear the allegations, creating an early test of how costly the opioid crisis might be for the pharmaceutical companies that made billions of dollars off the drugs.
