OHIO — A federal judge in Cleveland ordered CVS, Walmart and Walgreens pharmacies to pay a combined $650.6 million to Trumbull and Lake Counties, ruling that the companies must be held accountable for their part in fueling the opioid epidemic. 

What You Need To Know

  • Three major pharmacy operators have been ordered to pay a combined $650.6 million to two Ohio counties 

  • A federal judge said this is to address the damage from the opioid epidemic 

  • The judge said the sum must be paid to Trumbull and Lake counties over 15 years 

John Hamercheck, the President of the Board of Lake County Commissioners, said the pharmacies played a role in creating a public nuisance for his community. 

“Realistically when a small county, like Lake County, when you have 265 pills a year for every man, women and child in a county the size of Lake County, that is shocking,” he said. “That is telling, and the pharmacies were the last line of defense.” 

Walmart, Walgreens and CVS pharmacies will have to pay Lake County $306 million, and Trumbull County $344 million over the next 15 years. 

Representatives for the companies said the decision was not supported by the law, and they plan to appeal it. 

“There is a plan that was brought forward by the counties that the court had considered and, by all indications based on the verdict, they did accept,” Hamercheck said. “The pharmacies, on the other hand, chose not to prescribe a plan to mitigate and break the cycle of opioid addictions and reduce the dependency issues, so I think that is going to be very telling as we go into the appeal phase.” 

With that many opioids circling through Lake County, Hamercheck said that devastation and loss has become commonplace. 

The pain of losing someone to addiction is something Lake County resident Michelle Liddy knows all too well. 

Liddy’s 23-year-old son, Tanner Andrews, died from an opioid overdose in Aug. 2021. 

“He was great," she said. "He loved everybody. He didn’t care who you were or what you were. He had a lot of personal demons, though, so he used to escape them.” 

Liddy said she hopes this lawsuit against the pharmacies will help other families in her community from having to suffer the way she has. 

“They were supposed to be a safety net before, and they failed,” Liddy said.

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