Teva resolves Baltimore's opioid litigation with $80M settlement

After opting out of Teva’s $4.25 billion national opioid settlement last year, the city of Baltimore has secured its own payout through a settlement deal worth $80 million.

Teva will make an initial payment of $35 million by the end of the year and hand over the rest by July 1, 2025, Baltimore's mayor Brandon Scott said in a Monday press release

If Baltimore had signed onto the national settlement, it would have received $11 million over 13 years, the mayor’s office noted. Instead, through its own deal, the city will collect more than seven times that amount in less than a year, confirming that the decision to opt out of the larger settlement “paid off.”

 “It is my hope that these funds will help save lives and ensure that fewer families and communities have to endure the pain of losing loved ones to opioid overdose," Scott said in a statement. 

Teva’s sweeping $4.25 billion settlement wiped away thousands of opioid-related claims nationwide, with 48 states originally jumping on board. The company signed a separate settlement with the last holdout state, Nevada, last year for $193 million in a series of payments that will last through 2043. That settlement meant Teva had settled with “all 50 states and 99 percent of litigating subdivisions,” the company said in a release at the time.

Teva is just one of many companies striking settlement deals in response to opioid litigation. Amneal Pharmaceuticals, for one, agreed to a large settlement of its own earlier this summer, agreeing to pay $272.5 million to resolve some 900 lawsuits claiming the generics maker fueled the opioid crisis by not acting on suspicious orders.

To this day, the title of the largest opioid settlement goes to Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, which together agreed to pay $26 billion to seven states in 2021.

Meanwhile, Baltimore has also inked deals with Allergan and CVS for $45 million each as well as a $152.5 million settlement with Cardinal Health. The city is slated to go to trial with other opioid distributors and manufacturers next week.