Baltimore settles with Teva, Walgreens ahead of scheduled opioid trial

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) - Baltimore said on Tuesday that it has settled with Walgreens over claims that 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 settlement over opioids with drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical. Baltimore did not disclose the terms of its settlement with Walgreens, but the cumulative settlement amount implies that it was also $80 million.

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

Walgreens said in a statement: "Although Walgreens strongly disputes any liability, this settlement is in the best interests of all of our stakeholders."

The remaining defendants scheduled to face trial next week are drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, and distributors McKesson and Cencora.

"We will challenge the city's claims - which have no basis in the facts or the law," J&J said in a statement, adding that it "did everything a responsible manufacturer of these important prescription pain medicines should do."

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

Baltimore earlier this year announced settlements with drugmaker AbbVie's Allergan unit, pharmacy operator CVS and drug distributor Cardinal Health.

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

The vast majority of those cases have been settled through nationwide agreements, which now total about $46 billion.

Baltimore opted against joining those global settlements in the hopes of recovering more than it would have received through those deals. The city said that under a multi-state settlement with Teva, for example, it would have received only $11 million over 13 years.

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

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O'Brien)