In yet another Teva opioid settlement, the company has agreed to pay $24.8 million over 13 years, plus provide $20 million worth of Narcan over 10 years, to resolve its share of the litigation in San Francisco.
The agreement is “not an admission of liability or wrongdoing,” the company stressed. Teva added that it will continue to pursue a nationwide settlement.
Earlier in the San Francisco litigation, Teva tried to delay the proceedings, but a federal judge rejected the bid back in February.
Officials in San Francisco had argued that Teva and others helped fuel the nationwide opioid epidemic by “disseminating false and misleading statements” about the risks and safety of their drugs and by failing to design and operate systems to mark “suspicious” orders of opioids and to prevent “diversion” of the addictive drugs, the court documents stated.
Teva is no stranger to opioid settlement talks. In May, Bloomberg reported that the company and AbbVie’s Allergan unit were considering paying more than $5 billion to resolve more than 3,500 lawsuits regarding their opioid drugs.
At that time, Teva had pledged $378 million in opioid settlements with four states, to be paid over 13 to 18 years, and committed $240 million in overdose drugs.
Earlier in the year, Teva’s CEO Kare Schultz said the company was prepared to pay as much as $3.6 billion in cash to resolve its opioid litigation.
