Ireland not immune as big pharma in the dock with huge costs of opioid addiction crisis
Last week, the pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay just over $570m (€518m) in compensation by a court in the south western US state of Oklahoma. Irony of ironies, the company’s share price rose following the news, the markets having anticipated that the award would be even higher.
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) looks set to appeal the verdict, but this is just one skirmish in what is shaping up to be a lengthy and potentially bloody war of attrition as individuals, shareholders, and states take up the cudgels against the purveyors of treatments which have turned out, in many cases, to have had lethal side effects.
