Nassau County Opioid Trial: Jury Finds Teva Liable for Public Nuisance
Won by Napoli Shkolnik.
After a six-month trial, a Suffolk County jury on December 30, 2021 found Teva Pharmaceuticals liable for creating a public nuisance through deceptive opioid marketing, one of the first such verdicts against a manufacturer anywhere in the country.
What happened
For years, Teva Pharmaceuticals marketed its brand-name fentanyl drugs Actiq and Fentora well beyond their approved use for cancer-related pain, while downplaying the drugs' addiction risks to prescribers across New York. Nassau County and Suffolk County, along with New York State, argued in court that this conduct flooded Long Island communities with dangerous opioids, driving up overdose deaths, taxing emergency services, and straining public health systems.
The case went to trial in Suffolk County Supreme Court in June 2021. Other major opioid defendants, including Johnson and Johnson, Allergan, McKesson, and Cardinal Health, had settled before or during the proceedings. Teva, the last manufacturer standing, chose to contest liability before a jury.
Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik served as lead trial counsel for Nassau County, working alongside Jayne Conroy of Simmons Hanly Conroy, who represented Suffolk County. The trial lasted nearly six months, making it one of the longest in New York state history. Jurors heard evidence that Teva suppressed data on how addictive its pain medications were and used aggressive sales tactics to push prescriptions beyond the patient populations for which the drugs had been approved.
On December 30, 2021, the jury returned a liability verdict for the plaintiffs on their public nuisance claim. Teva said it strongly disagreed and intended to appeal. A separate damages proceeding was scheduled to determine what Teva would owe. Rather than face that phase, Teva later negotiated a resolution: in 2022 it agreed to pay New York State $523 million as part of a broader settlement covering both the state and county claims, bringing total opioid funds flowing to New York to more than $2 billion from various defendants.
At the time of the verdict, Shkolnik called it a 'massive victory' and said the evidence aired at trial needed to be public so communities could understand the company's role in the crisis. The December 2021 liability finding stood as one of the first jury determinations in the country to hold an opioid manufacturer accountable at trial.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.WGLT (NPR): A jury holds Teva Pharmaceuticals liable in the opioid crisis (Dec. 31, 2021)·Archived copy
- 2.WSHU Public Radio (NPR affiliate): 'Ending a landmark case, a Suffolk County jury found a drugmaker liable for its role in the opioid crisis' (Dec. 30, 2021)·Archived copy
- 3.New York Attorney General press release: 'AG James Secures $523 Million from Top Opioid Manufacturer Teva' (2022), confirming subsequent settlement resolving Nassau and Suffolk county claims·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Napoli Shkolnik
All Napoli Shkolnik proven verdicts →As court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik negotiated a settlement requiring 3M Company to pay up to $12.5 billion to public water systems contaminated by PFAS compounds in firefighting foam, the largest drinking-water settlement in American legal history.
As court-appointed co-lead counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik helped negotiate a $1.185 billion class settlement with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva to compensate public water systems across the United States for PFAS contamination tied to firefighting foam.
Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik represented Nassau County in negotiations that produced a $1.1 billion settlement with McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, the three largest prescription drug distributors in the United States.
Paul Napoli served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for nearly 10,000 firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who developed respiratory diseases after working at Ground Zero, securing a settlement worth up to $712.5 million against the city and its contractors.
Related class action verdicts
John Eddie Williams, Jr. served as one of five private attorneys retained by the State of Texas to sue the major tobacco companies, producing a $15.3 billion settlement in January 1998, the largest single-case settlement in U.S. history at the time.
Steven Marks and Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck served on the NFL Concussion Litigation Plaintiffs' Executive Committee, helping negotiate an uncapped settlement projected to exceed $1 billion for more than 20,000 retired players suffering traumatic brain injuries.
Monsanto and its chemical spinoff Solutia agreed in August 2003 to pay $700 million to resolve claims from more than 21,000 Anniston, Alabama residents who were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls the company manufactured and dumped near their homes for nearly four decades.
A federal jury in San Francisco found Google liable for invasion of privacy and intrusion upon seclusion after the company kept collecting data from third-party apps for users who had switched off the Web & App Activity setting. On September 3, 2025, the jury awarded $425,651,947 in compensatory damages and declined to award punitive damages. The award is a single class-wide figure shared by two nationwide classes of about 98 million users, not one person's recovery. The judge refused to set the verdict aside in August 2026, and Google has appealed to the Ninth Circuit.