Attorney General Mike Hunter

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter plans to appeal a $465 million opioid judgment after the judge refused to extend the abatement funds beyond a year.

The state joins Johnson & Johnson, sole defendant in the case, along with its subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, in appealing the Nov. 15 judgment, which followed the first trial in the nation over the opioid crisis. At trial, the state's lawyers had argued for $17.5 billion paid out over 30 years to fix the opioid crisis in Oklahoma.

"During the trial, the state's expert witnesses repeatedly testified that it could take up to 30 years or more to take our state back to where we were before the crisis began," Hunter said in a statement Thursday. "All of these experts agree that there are dire consequences if we do not end the crisis in its entirety, and that it will get much worse and more Oklahomans will die. Johnson & Johnson had no abatement expert of its own and failed to present a competing abatement plan."

The state's appeal brief is due Dec. 16. Johnson & Johnson also has said it plans to appeal the judgment, which it said was "neither supported by the facts nor the law" and misapplied the claim of public nuisance.

"Today marks another procedural step on the way to appeal," wrote Johnson & Johnson attorney Sabrina Strong, a partner at O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles. "As was said when the judgment was announced, the company has very strong grounds to have this decision overturned. The company manufactured FDA-approved pain medicines, took steps to educate doctors so they could make informed treatment decisions with their patients, and trained their sales representatives to lawfully provide appropriate and accurate information to doctors."

Cleveland County District Court Judge Thad Balkman issued his original $572 million bench verdict Aug. 26.

"The opioid crisis is an imminent danger and a menace to Oklahomans," he said when rendering his verdict. Specifically, he said, Johnson & Johnson and Janssen created a nuisance that caused an increased rate of addiction, overdose deaths and addicted babies in Oklahoma.

In this month's final judgment, Balkman's total in abatement costs included $232.9 million for assessments for addiction treatment services and nearly $103.3 million for staff to administer pain-management therapies. The judgment also included an unspecified amount of attorney fees.

He reduced an original $107.7 million earmarked for evaluating babies born addicted to opioids to $107,700 due to a mathematical error.

In a press release, Hunter noted that the state "agrees with Judge Balkman's final order on a multitude of fronts," most significantly that Johnson & Johnson created a public nuisance in causing the opioid crisis in Oklahoma.

"However, we respectfully disagree with his order where it says Johnson & Johnson must only fund one year of cleaning up the public nuisance he found Johnson & Johnson created, after the company deceived and bombarded our doctors and Oklahomans with lies, leading to the deadliest manmade public health crisis in our nation's history," he said in a statement. "This limitation directly opposes evidence presented during trial and the state's public nuisance law, which requires full remediation of the problem."

He added support for Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who, along with the state's two senior legislators, filed an Oct. 28 proposed amicus brief to clarify that Johnson & Johnson, and not the state's taxpayers, should continue to fund the abatement costs over several years. Johnson & Johnson, pointing to Balkman's conclusion that there were "gaps in the state's evidence" as to costs beyond one year, insisted that the payouts should be good for a year.

Balkman, however, disagreed with Johnson & Johnson that the judgment should be reduced based on $355 million in credits tied to settlements that the state negotiated with other defendants, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceuticals. Purdue settled out of the case in March for $270 million. One day before the May 28 trial, Teva agreed to pay $85 million, leaving Johnson & Johnson as the only defendant at trial.