Baltimore most recently settled with Teva, Walgreens before the opioid lawsuit

Baltimore said Tuesday it settled with Walgreens over claims the pharmacy operator fueled opioid addiction in the Maryland city, the latest in a series of settlements totaling $402.5 million ahead of a trial scheduled to begin next week .

The announcement came a day after the city reached an $80 million opioid settlement with drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical. Baltimore did not disclose the terms of its settlement with Walgreens, but the cumulative amount of the settlement implies that it was as much as $80 million.

“We are proud of our efforts to bring these companies to justice over the past few years,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement.

Walgreens said in a statement: “While Walgreens strongly disputes any liability, this settlement is in the best interests of all stakeholders.”

The other defendants scheduled to go on trial next week are drugmaker Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N and distributors McKesson MCK.N and Cencora COR.N.

“We will dispute the city’s claims — which have no basis in fact or law,” J&J said in a statement, adding that it “has done everything a responsible manufacturer of these important prescription pain medications should do “.

Teva, McKesson and Cencora did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this year, Baltimore announced deals with drugmaker AbbVie’s ABBV.N Allergan unit, pharmacy operator CVS CVS.N and drug distributor Cardinal Health CAH.N.

Like more than 3,000 other local governments that have filed opioid lawsuits, the city accused drug manufacturers of downplaying the risks of opioid addiction and distributors and pharmacies of ignoring red flags that the pills were being diverted into illegal channels.

The vast majority of these cases have been settled through nationwide settlements, which now total approximately $46 billion.

Baltimore opted out of those global settlements in hopes of recouping more than it would have received under those agreements. The city said that under a multi-state settlement with Teva, for example, it would have received just $11 million over 13 years.

More than 800,000 people in the United States died of opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2023, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Reporting by Pierson in New York, editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O’Brien)