Attorney General Maura Healey filed a lawsuit against opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma and several of its executives, she announced Tuesday, calling it the first suit in the country to name those executives personally in an effort to detail their contributions to the opioid epidemic.
Filed Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court, the 80-page complaint alleges that Purdue Pharma “created the epidemic and profited from it through a web of illegal deceit.”
Healey announced the lawsuit in a press conference at her office, where she was joined by Gov. Charlie Baker, Taunton Mayor Tom Hoye, Arlington Police Chief Fred Ryan, Joanne Peterson of the group Learn to Cope, and others.
They spoke alongside a series of six poster boards that displayed the first names of people “lost to opiod-related overdoses” since 2008.Â
Hoye said the addiction crisis “has a human face” in the parents in his city and others who have had to bury their children after overdoses. “Now the perpetrators will have a human face as well,” he said.Â
Framingham last week announced its plan to sue drug makers to recover costs associated with addressing the epidemic
