## Facts

- In 1970, the federal government began regulating opioid painkiller drugs as controlled substances, and opioid products carried prominent warnings about addiction and overdose risks.
- Through the 1970s and 1980s, accepted medical practice generally limited opioid use to short-term settings such as acute pain, post-surgical pain, cancer pain, and palliative care.
- In the 1990s and later, Purdue Pharma L.P. and other pharmaceutical manufacturers sold opioid painkillers (including OxyContin and Dilaudid) in the City of Chicago.
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required approval of drug labels and many drug-marketing materials, but the FDA did not typically review “unbranded” materials that discussed a drug class without naming a specific product.
- The City alleged that defendants used unbranded materials and a network of third-party groups to circulate messages intended to expand long-term opioid prescribing for chronic, non-cancer pain by downplaying addiction risks and overstating benefits.
- The City alleged that this campaign relied on deception, consumer fraud, false pretenses, false promises, and misrepresentations aimed at prescribers and payors, including the City.
- The City sued multiple manufacturer groups under the Chicago Municipal Code (including § 2-25-090), asserting that defendants’ unbranded materials and related conduct constituted deceptive business practices and consumer fraud.
- The City also alleged that it paid, through City employee health plans, for opioid prescriptions that were unnecessary and/or written for non-approved uses as a result of defendants’ deceptive conduct.
- Defendants moved to dismiss the City’s First Amended Complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), raising (among other arguments) pleading, causation, and party-specific deficiencies.

## Issues

1. Whether the City plausibly stated Chicago Municipal Code consumer-fraud/deceptive-practices claims based on alleged deceptive unbranded opioid-marketing materials.
2. Whether the fraud-based allegations satisfied Rule 9(b), including whether the complaint adequately identified the alleged misrepresentations and the actors responsible for them.
3. Whether the City plausibly alleged a causal connection between the alleged deception and the City’s asserted injuries, including payments by City health plans.
4. Whether the complaint adequately differentiated among multiple defendant groups, or instead relied on impermissible collective allegations.
5. Whether the City’s additional theories and counts (beyond the core municipal consumer-fraud counts) stated claims against the various defendant groups.

## Decision

- The court granted defendants’ motions to dismiss in substantial part and denied them in limited part.
- The court allowed the City’s municipal consumer-fraud/deceptive-practices claims (Counts I and II) to proceed only against the Purdue entities.
- The court dismissed the City’s claims against the non-Purdue defendant groups at that stage, finding the complaint did not plead fraud-based misconduct with enough defendant-specific detail.
- The court dismissed the City’s other counts and theories as pleaded in the First Amended Complaint, leaving the case narrowed to the Chicago Municipal Code consumer-fraud claims against Purdue.

## Legal Principles

- Fraud-based claims, including municipal consumer-fraud claims grounded in misrepresentation, are subject to Rule 9(b) and must be pleaded with particularity.
- When multiple defendants are sued for alleged deceptive statements, a complaint must connect specific statements and conduct to specific defendants; broad, collective “defendants did X” allegations are generally insufficient for Rule 9(b).
- At the pleading stage, a governmental plaintiff can satisfy injury and traceability by alleging concrete financial loss (such as paying for products) plausibly linked to the defendant’s alleged deception; proof and quantification are reserved for later stages.
- A complaint may proceed past Rule 12(b)(6) where it alleges a coherent theory that deceptive drug-marketing communications foreseeably affected prescribing and payment decisions, but the pleading must still identify who made what misstatements and how they caused the claimed payments.

## Conclusion

The court’s order substantially narrowed Chicago’s opioid litigation at the pleading stage, holding that the City had stated Chicago Municipal Code consumer-fraud/deceptive-practices claims only against the Purdue entities while dismissing the other claims and the claims against the remaining manufacturer groups due to pleading and defendant-specific deficiencies.


Chicago v. Purdue Pharma LP, 2015 WL 2208423 (2017)