Author’s Note: Information in the following article contains disturbing information regarding local children who were born addicted to opioids. The children are only identified by their initials. They were born at Greenbrier Valley Medical Center, Raleigh General Hospital and Charleston Area Medical Center between 2013 and 2017. Extreme care was taken to ensure that the children were not identified in this article.
Four civil lawsuits have been filed against major opioid manufacturers and consulting companies on behalf of local children who were born addicted to opioids and suffered from Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome—a condition that is caused when a mother is an active user of opioids during her pregnancy and the child, when born, is suddenly thrust into withdrawals.
The lawsuits, originally filed in Greenbrier, Raleigh, Wyoming and Kanawha Circuit Courts this past summer, have now been sent up to federal court.
According to federal documents, B.C. of Greenbrier County; B.P., of Raleigh County; B.D. of Wyoming County; and P.J. of Kanawha County all suffered devastating effects as a result of exposure to highly addictive opioids in utero.
In each case, the child experienced “severe withdrawal symptoms and lasting developmental impacts,” the documents state. The first days of the children’s lives “were spent in excruciating pain as doctors weaned [them] from opioid addiction.”
Umbilical cord panels taken by medical professionals at various hospitals on the day of birth confirmed the presence of oxycodone, hydromorphone, hydrocodone or a combination of the drugs in each child, resulting in the need for morphine, phenobarbital or methadone administration for the first weeks of life to “control withdrawal symptoms.”
The children were “forced to endure a painful start” to life,” the lawsuits allege. In each case, the birth mother had been using opioids during her pregnancy. In several instances, these opioids were initially medically prescribed, but in some cases, the mother resorted to other means of obtaining the drugs.
The defendants in the case include opioid manufacturers/sales companies Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Noramco; consulting company McKinsey & Company Inc. United States; and the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy.
The lawsuits allege that the reason for their case against the defendants is that “the dominant narrative that has emerged from other court cases and in the media holds that the current opioid epidemic started with a deceptive marketing and ‘educational’ campaign in the mid-1990s by Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, an extended-release version of oxycodone, an opioid medication.”
Following information that came from claims against Purdue Pharma, plaintiffs say that those named in this lawsuit focused on profit over health and that the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy “had the power and duty to investigate the wave of excessive and unusual orders and shipments of opioids…throughout the State of West Virginia in the mid-2010s—orders and shipments without which the opioid epidemic could not have taken off—but failed to do so.”
Plaintiffs argue that the children will “require years of treatment and counseling to deal with the effects of prenatal exposure to opioid medications [as a result of] the opioid crisis that has ravaged…southern West Virginia.” They have stated that they are seeking to “recover damages arising from the injuries suffered as a result of in utero exposure to oxycodone and other opioids prior to birth.”
Each of the four local lawsuits have been issued a “joint motion for an immediate stay of all further proceedings and deadlines pending transfer of this action to multidistrict litigation” at the request of Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey & Company Inc. United States and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, due to the fact that more than 3,000 similar nationwide lawsuits have been filed against the companies.
This case is one of thousands filed against the Janssen Defendants relating to the manufacture and sale of opioids,—a number that includes dozens of cases brought by West Virginia plaintiffs transferred to, or filed in, the Ohio MDL (Multidistrict Litigation). And it is one of more than sixty substantially similar actions filed against McKinsey, and ten filed in West Virginia, relating to consulting work it performed for Purdue Pharma…the manufacturer of OxyContin,” the stay request notes.
At this time, the lawsuits are pending an action from the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JDML) to transfer the cases, or portions of the cases, to the Ohio MDL and Northern District of California MDL.
The JDML scheduled a hearing regarding this matter (MDL 2996) on December 2. According to officials with the JDML clerk’s office located in Washington, DC, the judge’s statements should be available in the next couple of weeks.
The West Virginia Daily News will provide updates as they become available.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.