Nassau County Secures $1.1 Billion From the Three Largest U.S. Drug Distributors Over the Opioid Epidemic

For years, Nassau County and its neighbors watched the opioid epidemic hollow out communities across Long Island. Overdose deaths climbed. Emergency rooms filled. Municipal budgets absorbed treatment costs that residents and local governments had not caused. Behind those numbers were distributors, the companies that moved hundreds of millions of opioid doses from manufacturers to pharmacies, that county officials and their lawyers argued had ignored red flags and continued filling orders long after suspicious shipping patterns were documented.

Nassau County retained Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik to pursue claims against the three corporations that controlled the largest share of the prescription-drug distribution market: McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc., and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation. The litigation proceeded as part of the broader National Prescription Opiate Litigation coordinated in federal court, while New York State pursued parallel claims before New York courts under Attorney General Letitia James.

The central theory was that the distributors had a legal duty to monitor their own shipment data, identify suspicious orders, and report or refuse them. Instead, county lawyers argued, the companies continued pushing volumes of opioids into communities while collecting revenue from those sales. Nassau and Suffolk counties had filed among the earliest county-level opioid lawsuits in the country, and Nassau County Executive Laura Curran noted that 'Long Island has paved the way for the rest of the country in these lawsuits.'

On July 20, 2021, New York State announced a $1.1 billion settlement with the three distributors covering the state and its counties. Nassau County stood to receive up to $115 million, and Suffolk County up to $120 million, paid out over 18 years. A separate provision required the distributors to build a centralized clearinghouse to track their own opioid shipments nationwide and flag suspicious ordering patterns going forward. Shkolnik noted that, unlike a proposed national settlement structure, the New York agreement was not contingent on other states joining.

The settlement funds were directed to opioid treatment, prevention, and abatement programs. No portion of the settlement was reduced on appeal. Litigation against pharmaceutical manufacturers Teva, Endo, and Allergan continued separately after this agreement was signed.