Trial Magazine

In 2015, enough opioids were prescribed in the United States to keep every American medicated “around the clock for three weeks,” in large part because of the actions of giant drug distributors, particularly market-leader McKesson Corp. McKesson has made billions of dollars by distributing the highly addictive pain medicines even when it knew massive quantities of the drugs were hitting the black market. Fines did little to stop it because the opioid trade was its billion-dollar moneymaker.

McKesson’s role in the opioid crisis is just one example highlighted in AAJ’s most recent report, “Worst Corporate Conduct of 2017.” It details a seemingly never-ending stream of corporate ­cover-ups, conspiracies, and brazen fraud that marked last year and affected millions of Americans: from Equifax profiting off its massive data breach, to Monsanto ghostwriting scientific data to support its claim that a chemical in its Roundup weed killer does not cause cancer, to Wells Fargo’s wrongful repossession of almost 25,000 customers’ cars. In many of the cases highlighted in the report, such as the opioid crisis, the consequences have been deadly—91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1

With a corporate culture that values profits over integrity and safety—and with white-collar prosecutions at a 20-year low under the Trump administration—the civil justice system’s role in holding corporations accountable has never been more important. Visit www.justice.org/2017misconductreport to read the report.

David Ratcliff is a researcher for AAJ Public Affairs. He can be reached at david.ratcliff@justice.org.

Notes

1. Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States Continued to Increase in 2015 (Aug. 30, 2017), https://tinyurl.com/h9qlzj9.