The lawsuit alleges that “a veritable rouge’s gallery of pill-pushing doctors and pharmacies” grew rich on the back of patients who sought medical treatment only to have their lives wrecked by addiction.

“It was a conspiracy,” said Jim Cagle, the lawyer for Hatcher and other plaintiffs. “Doctors and pharmacies were keeping them hooked. They were feeding the addiction.”

Some of the physicians and pharmacists involved have been jailed and stripped of their medical licences while several drug distributors agreed in June to pay West Virginia millions of dollars for flooding the state with opioid pills, contributing to an addiction epidemic and the highest death rate from drug overdoses in the US.