The town of Londonderry is suing pharmaceutical makers for their alleged role in fueling the opioid crisis, joining hundreds of other municipalities across the country.
Lawyers representing Londonderry filed a 168-page petition in federal court on Monday accusing a group of pharmaceutical companies including Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, of false marketing and pushing prescription opioids.
“These pharmaceutical companies aggressively advertised to and persuaded doctors to prescribe highly addictive, dangerous opioids, which then turned patients into drug addicts for their own corporate profit,” reads the complaint. “Such actions were intentional and/or unlawful.”
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages to cover costs for providing medical care for people with opioid addiction, as well as associated costs for law enforcement.
“This is part of a group of lawsuits being brought on behalf of municipalities against opioid manufacturers and distributors, claiming that they have caused this opioid problem in this country with a lot of deaths, overdoses and so forth,” said Thomas Colantuono, a lawyer with Bianco Professional Association, who is representing Londonderry.
Colantuono says the Londonderry case will likely be consolidated into a larger suit involving hundreds of towns, cities and states moving through a federal court in Ohio.
Nashua, Manchester, Concord, and Laconia are among the New Hampshire municipalities that previously filed similar suits.
