Years into a scourge that has cost this country thousands of lives and billions of dollars, Canadians looking to sue drug makers over their alleged role in the overdose epidemic have been given new hope by a U.S. court ruling.In a landmark ruling this week, an Oklahoma judge ordered Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries to pay $572 million (U.S.), after the state successfully argued that the company mounted a misleading marketing campaign overstating the drugs’ effectiveness for chronic pain and understating the risk of addiction — allegedly leading to a costly and damaging opioid epidemic.Experts say that win could mean success in similar cases in Canada. The prospect of mounting legal cases poses an existential risk to some pharmaceutical companies. NBC News reported Tuesday that drugmaker Purdue Pharma was negotiating a multibillion-dollar settlement with lawyers across the U.S. that would resolve about 2,000 lawsuits against the company, which would declare bankruptcy as part of the deal. That deal has not yet been approved.“American precedent doesn’t count in Canada,” said Tony Merchant, a Saskatchewan lawyer. “But it’s going in the right direction and judges here are going to look at that.”The legal fight in this country is being waged on two fronts: by provinces and by individuals.British Columbia filed a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers in August 2018, including Johnson & Johnson. If certified, that case will automatically include all of the provinces and territories. Individual Canadians, meanwhile, have also undertaken their own suits, spanning multiple provinces and seeking millions of dollars in damage.Merchant represents Saskatchewan man Demetrios Perdikaris in a proposed class-action lawsuit against Purdue Pharma Inc., the manufacturer of the painkiller OxyContin. Perdikaris was a successful chef, Merchant said, who developed an addiction to painkillers after he sustained an injury that p ...
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