Castigating the tactic as a "publicity stunt," Attorney General Ashley Moody is asking a judge to reject an effort by the nation's two largest pharmacy chains to add 500 unidentified physicians to the state's lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry over the opioid epidemic.

CVS Pharmacy Inc. and Walgreen Co. filed what is called a third-party complaint against 500 "John and Jane Doe" doctors, alleging that the prescribing physicians — and not the drug stores — are to blame for faulty prescriptions.

The state's lawsuit against the chains "is nothing more than unsupported speculation" that pharmacists "filled prescriptions for opioid medications that they should not have filled" despite the state's "inability to support its claim with even one instance of an improperly filled prescription," the pharmacies argued in the third-party complaint filed Jan. 22.