The 42-page judgment from Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman was revealing for the methodology he used when deciding to rule in favor of the state of Oklahoma on the opioid case.
When speaking to the courtroom Monday, Balkman said that Johnson & Johnson and Janssen "compromised the health and safety" of the citizens of Oklahoma. He awarded Oklahoma more than $572 million that will go to an abatement plan to help solve the crisis in the state.
"Defendants ran a website called Prescribe Responsibly as a form of unbranded marketing," the judge wrote in the opioid decision. "Information on the Prescribe Responsibly website promoted Defendants' messaging that the solution to 'pseudoaddiction' was 'to prescribe more opioids'"
“The defendants used the phrase ‘pseudoaddiction’ to convince doctors that patients who exhibited signs of addiction… were not actually suffering from addiction, but from the undertreatment of pain,” he also said.
The state had sought $17.2 billion from the company, but was awarded a small percentage.
