Pike joins

others in OxyContin lawsuit

BY LORETTA TACKETT

STAFF WRITER

Pike officials are moving ahead with a plan to sue the makers of OxyContin.

Yesterday, the fiscal court entered a fee agreement with the Gary C. Johnson Law Firm to represent them in a lawsuit the Attorney General Office’s is expected to file Oct 4.

Although the fee amount was not disclosed as of press time, the standard is one-third.

U.S. District Judge James Jones levied a fine of $634.5 million on Purdue Pharma L.P — located in Stamford, Conn. — in July for misleading the public about the painkiller’s risk of addiction.

Pike County opted to investigate a potential lawsuit against Purdue in June, citing several reasons including widespread abuse resulting in numerous deaths.

The Pike County Coroner’s Office reported oxycodone, the main ingredient in OxyContin, was present in toxicology reports for 13 of the 46 drug-related deaths in 2006, up from seven out of 57 cases in 2005.

However, that number may be below the true count. Some of the county’s overdose victims die at home, or in the hospital, and are not handled by County Coroner’s office.

The Frankfort location of the State Medical Examiner’s Office, which handles Eastern Kentucky cases, performed 168 autopsies on overdose victims in 2006, Public Information Officer Stacy Floaden, of the Department of Justice and Public Safety, said. Oxycodone was found in 39 of those victims, and was the third most frequent drug found, following methadone and hydrocodone.

State medical examiners did autopsies on 484 overdose victims statewide, detecting oxycodone in 78 of those, Floaden said.

Pike County will be representative of a number of counties in a class action suit against the company, said County Executive Assistant T.J. Litafik.

“We’re expecting a mountain of discovery,” said Bradley A. Sears, who is one of several attorneys from the Johnson firm expected to be working on the case.

Referencing the Virginia case, Sears said there were 2,000 documents and 500 CDs of information pertaining to that lawsuit.

No one would disclose the number of counties Pike will represent in the lawsuit but the Attorney General’s (AG) Office Communications Director Corey Bellamy confirmed his office is working with several counties, and a press announcement scheduled for Oct. 4 in Pike and Franklin counties.

The Ag’s Office is expected to file the case in Pike Circuit Court Oct. 4, Sears said.