Feds sue Walmart over role in opioid crisis

Yahoo Finance's Adam Shapiro and Julia La Roche disucss why the Justice Department is sueing Walmart.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: So as we were coming into the stream at around 3 o'clock, there was the news about Walmart and the Department of Justice. Julia La Roche, you follow Walmart very closely, and they're turning their sights on Walmart because of opioids. What's the latest?

JULIA LA ROCHE: Yeah, well, there's been a complaint now filed by the Department of Justice in the state of Delaware. Specifically, the DOJ has alleged that Walmart, which is the nation's largest retailer, has unlawful-- this is, quote, "unlawfully dispensed controlled substances from pharmacies.

It operated across the country and unlawfully distributed controlled substances to those pharmacies throughout the height of the prescription opioid crisis." And they are saying here that they are seeking civil penalties. And again, I'm quoting this from the release, that they could total the billions of-- could total in the billions of dollars and an injunctive relief.

And they also say-- the DOJ says, this is a multiyear investigation by the department's prescription, interdiction, and litigation task force here. And so this is not completely unexpected, Adam, if you go back to late October. Walmart preemptively filed a complaint against the DOJ and the DEA around this exact issue.

And Walmart did put out a response, and I can share a bit of that, it just came through here. Walmart says, the Justice Department's investigation is tainted by historical ethics violations, and this lawsuit invents a legal theory that unlawfully forces pharmacists to come between the patients and their doctors and is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context blaming the pharmacists for not second guessing the very doctors the DEA approved to prescribe opioids in a transparent attempt to shift the blame from the DEA's well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place.

So Walmart operates about 5,000 [INAUDIBLE]. This is a story we will continue to follow.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Right, and then we're also following their shares, off about 1% right now, as is the Dow, it's off almost a little over 0.5%.