OxyContin cases rejected for class-action status

WKYT.com is reporting that 1,000 individual lawsuits have been filed in NYC against the maker of OxyContin because “a New York state judge refused to accept a class-action suit.”

The reason that the cases have to be tried individually is that the hearing judge decided that too many of them had different injury claims and different evidence requirements. Oxycontin, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995, is a powerful painkiller, often used in cancer cases.

But it is also powerfully addictive, something the plaintiffs claim the drug’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, of Stamford, Conn., failed to point out to patients and doctors when it marketed the drug.

These lawsuits are the latest in a series of thousands that have been filed against Purdue Pharma in the United States. According to AP, the company has never lost an OxyContin lawsuit, but there was a settlement with the West Virginia attorney general’s office in November 2004.