A federal judge allowed on Thursday some claims to proceed from a narrow class of consumers -- women who used opiods while pregnant -- in an ongoing suit against management consulting company McKinsey and Co. over its role in the opioid crisis, Courthouse News reports. McKinsey is accused of devising strategies for its client, Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma, that boosted sales of high-dose pills with deceptive messaging to doctors that downplayed the risks of addiction. Most parties settled their claims against McKinsey, but 11 mothers who say they used opioids while they were pregnant declined to settle, claiming that their children’s exposure to the opioids in utero caused neonatal abstinence syndrome, a condition that mimics drug withdrawal.
U.S. Senior District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that negligence and failure to warn claims from the pregnant women can proceed because precedent has established that McKinsey can be held liable for injuries they or their conspirators inflicted on the public. The original class of plaintiffs in the multi-district litigation were private citizens, city governments, Native American tribes, school districts, and mothers of children with neonatal abstinence syndrome from opioid exposure in the womb. They argued that McKinsey consultants conducted extensive research that helped Purdue carry out a targeted marketing plan to increase sales.