## Facts

- The State of Oklahoma sued Johnson & Johnson and related Janssen entities, alleging their marketing and promotion of prescription opioids contributed to the opioid crisis statewide.
- The State alleged the companies’ marketing overstated benefits for chronic, non-cancer pain and minimized risks such as addiction and overdose.
- After settlements with other defendants, the case proceeded to a bench trial against these defendants on a single theory: statutory public nuisance under Oklahoma law.
- The trial court found the defendants’ marketing created a public nuisance and ordered approximately $465 million to fund one year of statewide opioid-abatement programs.
- The trial court’s abatement amount was not limited to the defendants’ market share and was not reduced by the State’s prior settlements with other manufacturers.

## Issues

1. Whether Oklahoma’s public-nuisance statute permits liability based on the manufacture, marketing, and sale of lawful, FDA-approved prescription opioids.
2. Whether nuisance liability requires the defendant’s control over the alleged nuisance at the time of injury when intervening actors (e.g., prescribers and patients) make independent decisions.
3. Whether the trial court’s abatement award—structured as funding of broad government programs without apportionment or settlement offsets—was a legally permissible nuisance remedy.

## Decision

- The Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed the judgment against the defendants and vacated the $465 million abatement order.
- The court held Oklahoma public-nuisance law does not extend to the manufacture, marketing, or sale of lawful products such as prescription medications.
- The court reasoned that using nuisance to address alleged mismarketing of products would improperly convert product-liability-type claims into nuisance claims.
- The court emphasized that, after sale, the defendants did not control prescribing, dispensing, or misuse decisions made by independent actors.
- Because nuisance liability failed as a matter of law, the court vacated (rather than recalculated) the abatement award; the State’s cross-appeal seeking a longer abatement period failed.

## Legal Principles

- Oklahoma statutory public nuisance is confined to its traditional domain (interference with public rights typically tied to localized conditions or activities), and it is not a general tool for addressing broad public-health harms linked to lawful products.
- Claims that a manufacturer misrepresented a product’s risks and benefits sound in product liability or other specific statutory regimes, not public nuisance.
- Nuisance liability generally requires the defendant’s control over the instrumentality or condition alleged to constitute the nuisance; lack of control after a lawful sale weighs against nuisance liability.
- Nuisance abatement targets eliminating or reducing a nuisance condition; an order compelling a single defendant to fund wide-ranging government programs untethered to the defendant’s share or conduct raises remedial concerns.

## Conclusion

The court set aside the nuisance judgment and abatement award, concluding that Oklahoma public-nuisance law cannot be used to impose liability on a manufacturer for the lawful marketing and sale of prescription opioids and that the judiciary should not expand nuisance doctrine to resolve statewide product-related public-health crises.


State ex rel. Hunter v. Johnson & Johnson, 499 P.3d 719 (Okla. 2021)