Johnson & Johnson, which was the only defendant in the seven-week trial, has denied any wrongdoing.
Balkman's decision could have sweeping implications as other states and communities try to hold companies responsible for the fueling the opioid epidemic that killed more than 400,000 people in the U.S. from 1999 to 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter had claimed that J&J and its pharmaceutical subsidiary Janssen aggressively marketed to doctors and downplayed the risks of opioids as early as the 1990s. The state said J&J's sales practices created an oversupply of the addictive painkillers and "a public nuisance" that upended lives and would cost the state $12.7 billion to $17.5 billion. The state was seeking more than $17 billion from the company.
J&J, which marketed the opioid painkillers Duragesic and Nucynta, has denied any wrongdoing. Lawyers for the company disputed the legal basis Oklahoma used to sue J&J, relying on a "public nuisance" claim. They said the state has previously limited the act to disputes involving property or public spaces.
Investors were expecting J&J to be fined between $500 million and $5 billion, according to Evercore ISI analyst Elizabeth Anderson. Legal analysts had seen the trial as a litmus test for plaintiffs of some 1,900 pending cases against Purdue Pharma, J&J and other opioid manufacturers that were consolidated and transferred to a federal judge in the Northern District of Ohio. Some legal scholars have compared the massive opioid litigation to the tobacco master settlement agreement in the 1990s.
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