Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson must pay $572m for its part in fuelling Oklahoma’s opioid addiction crisis, a judge in the US state has ruled, the BBC reports.
The company said immediately after the judgement that it would appeal.
The case was the first to go to trial out of thousands of lawsuits filed against opioid makers and distributors.
Opioids were involved in almost 400,000 overdose deaths in the US from 1999 to 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since 2000, some 6,000 people in Oklahoma have died from opioid overdoses, according to the state’s lawyers.
Earlier this year, Oklahoma settled with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma for $270m and Teva Pharmaceutical for $85m, leaving Johnson & Johnson as the lone defendant.
