The Supreme Court’s ruling comes in one of many disputes across the US involving pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and drug distributors suing insurers to recover funds lost defending against and settling thousands of opioid lawsuits.
In 2020, a lower-court judge ruled that various Chubb subsidiaries would have to defend Rite Aid against lawsuits by two counties in Ohio. However, Delaware’s Supreme Court reversed the decision.
The lawsuits in question accuse Rite Aid of negligently distributing prescription pain pills that can be highly addictive. Rite Aid denies wrongdoing and sued Chubb in 2019 in a bid to recover the costs of its defence and upcoming settlements.
In the US, over 3,000 lawsuits have been filed, primarily by state and local governments, in a bid to hold companies to account for the opioid epidemic that has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
