The Core Legal Strategy Against Opioid Companies May Be Faltering

In 2014, as overdoses and deaths from prescription opioids were catapulting, gutting the budgets of local governments that were struggling to contain the damage, lawyers began working up a novel legal strategy to hold the pharmaceutical industry responsible.

That approach, which in the ensuing years became the foundation for more than 3,000 lawsuits, was soundly rejected this month by a California trial judge and, on Tuesday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court, two states where the first opioid trials have concluded.