Purdue Pharma is launching its counterattack against a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts attorney general that alleges that the company, which makes opioid painkillers including OxyContin, seeded the state’s opioid crisis by misleading the public and prescribers about its drugs’ risk of addiction and overdose.
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which has been sent to state Attorney General Maura Healey, Purdue argues that the suit makes outrageous claims but lacks the factual foundation or legal merits to put forward such assertions. It says the state fails to demonstrate that Purdue’s products and actions caused the opioid crisis, as the suit contends.
The judge, Purdue’s motion says, should “dismiss the Commonwealth’s [lawsuit] as oversimplified scapegoating based on a distorted account of the facts unsupported by applicable law.
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