Vancouver, Wash. – The Clark County Council voted Tuesday to retain a law firm to file a lawsuit against pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers that make and sell opioids.

The vote adds Clark County to a growing number of jurisdictions nationwide that seek to hold the companies accountable for harm opioid addiction has done in local communities and recover public costs.

Attorneys with the Seattle-based law firm of Keller Rohrback will file the lawsuit on behalf of Clark County. The firm, which has offices in four states, earlier filed similar lawsuits on behalf of King, Skagit, Pierce and Clallam counties and the cities of Tacoma, Mount Vernon, Burlington and Sedro-Wooley. It also filed a case on behalf of the Arizona Municipal Risk Recovery Pool, a coalition of 76 cities and towns.

The law firm will be paid only if Clark County recovers damages in a settlement or at trial.

Opioids are medications in a class of pain relievers whose chemical composition is nearly identical to heroin. Since 1995, when the Federal Drug Administration approved OxyContin, opioids have become the most prescribed drug in America. In 2016, health care providers wrote 289 million prescriptions for opioids, enough for every adult in the US to have more than one bottle of pills. Opioid overdoses are the leading cause of accidental deaths nationwide.

In Clark County, at least 91 people died of opioid-related causes since 2014. Another 51 people died of heroin use during that time period. In Clark County’s therapeutic Drug Court, opioid users made up one-third of defendants in 2010, half of defendants in 2014 and 55 percent in January 2018.

Since Clark County Public Health started an opioid overdose prevention program in 2014, it has distributed more than 3,600 kits containing naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdose effects. More than 1,200 people, including Sheriff’s deputies, have been trained to use the kits and carry them, and more than 660 overdoses have been reversed. 

CONTACT
Emily Sheldrick
Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney
Prosecuting Attorney's Office
360.397.2261
emily.sheldrick@clark.wa.gov