DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--This week, the nationally recognized law firm Baron & Budd announced that a $1.37 billion nationwide settlement agreement with retail pharmacy giant Kroger has been finalized. Kroger has agreed to the payout which will go to states, counties, municipalities, and Native American tribes to resolve allegations concerning the company’s role in the opioid epidemic. Baron & Budd’s President and Managing Shareholder, Russell Budd, had a lead role in negotiating the settlement. This settlement, in addition to prior agreements with opioid manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies, brings the total national settlement amount to more than $50 billion.
While Kroger is widely known as a grocery store chain, the company operates more than 2,000 pharmacies across the United States. Under both federal and state law, retail pharmacies, such as Kroger, are required to comply with “corresponding responsibility” obligations. That means they must identify prescriptions with “red flags” indicating the drugs may not be prescribed for a legitimate medical purpose, document their findings, and if they cannot resolve the red flags, they must refuse to fill them. During the multi-year litigation, the public entity plaintiffs argued that Kroger’s pharmacies failed to fulfill their legal “corresponding responsibility” obligations.
Additionally, the plaintiffs argued that Kroger’s distribution practices, which involve distributing opioids through its own network, failed to meet the requirements for monitoring and reporting “suspicious orders.” Federal and state laws mandate companies like Kroger to take steps to detect and investigate opioid orders that are of an unusual size, pattern, or frequency within their distribution system.
“This settlement represents a significant step toward holding corporate actors accountable for their role in the opioid crisis,” said Russell Budd. “The epidemic has claimed countless lives and devastated families and communities across the nation. This agreement, along with the other settlements we’ve helped secure, is part of a broader effort to provide resources for recovery and healing.”
For more than a decade, opioid painkillers have been widely and fraudulently distributed, driven by corporate decisions that prioritized profits over public health. This has fueled an opioid crisis characterized by soaring rates of addiction, overdose deaths, and other related harms. Prescription opioids were a primary driver of this crisis, contributing to the rise of heroin and fentanyl use, as well as devasting consequences including OUD (opioid use disorder), opioid-related-mortality, hospitalizations, foster care placements, and NAS (neonatal abstinence syndrome).
This settlement is part of an ongoing national effort to address the devastating impacts of the opioid epidemic and provide critical resources for communities and individuals in need of recovery support.
Baron & Budd Opioid Litigation Team
Baron & Budd attorneys represent municipalities, states, cities, counties, and tribal nations across the country in the complex opioid litigation. The firm started the opioid multidistrict litigation (MDL) and is part of the team which filed one of the first lawsuits against the drug distributors. Our attorneys co-led the first AG trial to be completed against the pharmacies, and have helped communities hold pharmacies, distributors, and manufacturers accountable for the opioid epidemic in the United States.
For more information visit, www.nationalopioidcrisis.com.
About Baron & Budd P.C.
With more than 40 years of experience, Baron & Budd has the expertise and resources to handle complex litigation throughout the United States. As a law firm that takes pride in remaining at the forefront of litigation, Baron & Budd has spearheaded many significant cases for hundreds of public entities and tens of thousands of individuals. Since the firm was founded in 1977, Baron & Budd has achieved substantial national acclaim for its work on cutting-edge litigation, trying hundreds of cases to verdict and settling tens of thousands of cases in areas of litigation as diverse and significant as dangerous and highly addictive pharmaceuticals, defective medical devices, asbestos and mesothelioma, wildfires, environmental contamination, fraudulent banking practices, e-cigarettes, motor vehicles, federal whistleblower cases, and other consumer fraud issues.
