Alaska Supreme Court Justice Jude Pate, right, asks a question during oral arguments in a case concerning correspondence education allotments, on June 27, 2024, in the Boney Courthouse in Anchorage. (Photo by Andrew Kitchenman/Alaska Beacon)
The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday overturned a two-year-old lower court decision that dismissed a state lawsuit against Albertsons and Kroger, the corporate parents of Safeway and Fred Meyer, for their role in the state’s prescription opioid addiction epidemic.
Writing unanimously for the court, Justice Jude Pate wrote, “we hold that the pharmacies’ failure to fulfill their legal obligations when dispensing opioids unreasonably interfered with public rights protected by the common law.”
In this case, the public rights in question are the rights to public health and public safety.
The decision means the state’s case can now proceed and be argued on its merits in state Superior Court.
In a written statement, the Department of Law said, “We are pleased the Court agreed that our lawsuit against Albertsons and Kroger can proceed based on their alleged wrongful conduct that added to the opioid epidemic. We are still reviewing the full decision and look forward to the case proceeding in the coming months.”
The state has accused the companies of deliberately selling large amounts of addictive opioid pills to Alaskans even as they knew the harms that would result.
“According to the complaint, the effects of the opioid epidemic have touched nearly every facet of Alaskan society over the past two decades,” the justices wrote in summary. “Opioid addiction, as well as both fatal and non-fatal overdoses, have skyrocketed over the years, leading to overwhelming burdens on our policing and healthcare systems.”
Demand for legal opioids in turn generated demand for illegal ones — an estimated 11.5% of the state’s population now needs substance abuse treatment, according to the state’s information.
Between 2015 and 2016, the amount of opioid-based prescription drugs seized by the Alaska Statewide Drug Enforcement Unit increased by 96%; the amount of oxycodone seized increased by 1,685%.
In 2024, 339 people died from drug overdoses in Alaska, a 5% decline from the record high of 357 the year before.
Alaska sued the pharmacy-owning companies in 2022, claiming they violated the state’s unfair trade practices law and were acting as a public nuisance. It settled cases against other pharmacy operators out of court.
The state sought financial penalties against the companies and asked for a court order mandating that they change their prescription drug policies and begin offering addiction treatment.
But in 2024, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Una Gandbhir dismissed the suit, saying that neither the Unfair Trade Practices Act nor the state’s public-nuisance law could apply.
The state appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in February 2025 and ruled last week.
In the 35-page decision, the court unanimously agreed “that the State adequately alleged that the pharmacies unreasonably interfered with public rights.”
“The State has plausibly alleged interferences with the collective right to public health and public safety,” the court wrote in part, explaining that the pharmacies’ alleged actions impacts the wider community, akin to a landowner who fails to drain a malarial swamp or a person who operates a brothel.
“Although addicted prescription opioid users may be those individuals most directly harmed by opioid diversion, the massive and widespread potential for harm from opioid diversion alleged in the complaint touches the entire community,” the court wrote.
The court also agreed that the Unfair Trade Practices Act does not apply — with one exception — because the companies demonstrated that they “are subject to ongoing, careful regulation” and “that the pharmacies’ alleged actions are specifically prohibited under state statutes and regulations.”
Prohibited actions are generally subject to legal action under the laws allegedly being violated, not the trade act.
Most of the pharmacies’ actions are regulated by the state Board of Pharmacy, the high court concluded. The only state-alleged misdeed that isn’t regulated by the board is an advertising campaign that was meant to mislead Alaskans into believing that Albertsons and Kroger were following the law and fighting the opioid epidemic.
“We hold that the pharmacies failed to meet their burden to establish that the alleged deceptive promotion of their compliance efforts was exempt from the (trade act),” the court wrote.
