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In a lawsuit pitting Johnson & Johnson against Oklahoma’s attorney general to determine the drug company’s potential financial liability for deaths related to the opioid abuse crisis, the company has fought claims that it was an opioid “kingpin” by pointing out their products accounted for less than 1% of the total prescribed in the state.

Nicolas Terry, Hall Render Professor of Law and executive director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at IU McKinney School of Law, has commented frequently on the unfolding opioid liability litigation.

In an article published by Bloomberg Law on July 25, Professor Terry noted how “remarkably tough” it will be for the state to prove that the company caused the crisis given the complex origins, different products, distributors, etc. (“J&J Fights Opioid ‘Kingpin’ Label by Noting 1% Market Share” by Valerie Bauman). “These are FDA-approved drugs, and they were being dispensed by physicians,” Terry told Bloomberg. He went on to add that the attorney general “hurt his case…by not having sufficient evidence they were the kingpin.”

Professor Terry teaches healthcare and health policy courses. His recent scholarship has dealt with health privacy, mobile health, the Internet of Things, Big Data, AI, and the opioid overdose epidemic.

He serves on Indiana University’s Grand Challenges Scientific Leadership Team, working on the addictions crisis and is the principal investigator on addictions law and policy Grand Challenge grants. In that capacity he recently testified on opioids policy before the Senate Committee on Aging. He is one of the permanent bloggers at Harvard Law School’s Bill of Health, and “The Week in Health Law” podcast at TWIHL.com. He is @nicolasterry on twitter.