ALBANY COUNTY — Testimony in a lawsuit filed by Albany County against pharmaceutical companies for their practices in promoting and selling opioid painkillers will be heard this coming Wednesday, County Executive Daniel McCoy said.

The suit seeks to stop the companies from deceptive practices as well as seeking monetary compensation for damages and costs.

McCoy told The Enterprise on Friday that he would be traveling to Cleveland, Ohio, where Albany County will be one of over 200 plaintiffs testifying in federal court before Judge Dan A. Polster of the Northern District of Ohio.

McCoy said that it had been expected that the county would be going before a jury in 2019, but Polster had said at a recent court proceeding that for every day he waited to make a decision “about 150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we’re meeting.” His assertion was based on a statistic that says 50,000 people die each year in the United States from opioid overdoses.

Albany County is one of over 200 plaintiffs in the case against the pharmaceutical companies; the county singled out the drug companies Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Cephalon Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

The county’s individual lawsuit — which has now been combined with others as multidistrict litigation — states that these drug companies, among other things, doubled the amount of oxycodone used in painkillers over two decades, used deceptive advertising, handpicked experts with favorable opinions to promote them, and did not disclose the risk of addiction to doctors when promoting higher dosages.

The lawsuit states that the companies described symptoms of addiction as “pseudoaddiction,” including companies that said that the symptoms were a sign of pain being “under-treated.”

The lawsuit also alleges the companies violated New York State’s business laws and the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.

The county had hired the law firm Motley Rice, said McCoy, to work with Albany County’s attorney. Motley Rice is one of the nation’s largest litigation firms and known for going up against large industries such as tobacco and asbestos.

McCoy hopes that, should the outcome be in favor of Albany County and the other plaintiffs, that rules about things such as the number of opioid painkiller that can be prescribed will be changed to reduce the risk of someone becoming addicted.

He said that he and the county’s attorneys will be presenting the efforts the county has taken to combat the opioid epidemic and news reports about the effects of opioid addiction.

In the past year, Albany County has launched a program known as Project Orange in which prescription pills may be returned to a pharmacy participating in the project. In his state-of-the-county address last night, McCoy also noted the increasing number of children going into foster care due to their parents becoming addicted. (See related story.)