A Washington state judge has ordered supermarket chain Albertsons to pay $900 million after ruling that its pharmacies played a substantial part in fuelling the state's opioid epidemic. King County Superior Court Judge Janet Helson issued the decision on Thursday 5 November, following a nine-week bench trial in a case brought by the Washington attorney general in 2022.

The award is made up of $800 million to fund a court-supervised plan to address the harm caused by the epidemic, and $100 million in civil penalties, plus the state's legal costs. Judge Helson found that Albertsons and its Safeway subsidiary created a public nuisance and breached Washington's Consumer Protection Act by filling millions of prescriptions that carried warning signs of misuse without properly checking them.

According to the court, Albertsons pharmacies in Washington dispensed more than 641 million opioid pills between 2006 and 2022, including more than 6.5 million prescriptions that triggered one or more commonly recognised red flags. The company runs more than 200 pharmacies in the state under the Albertsons, Safeway and Haggen names.

Washington's Attorney General, Nick Brown, said the judgment is believed to be the largest verdict in the state's history. The state had asked the court for $2.2 billion. Albertsons said it was disappointed by the ruling and is considering an appeal. The company had earlier announced a $774 million nationwide opioid settlement framework in April 2026, but Washington chose not to join it and pressed ahead with its own case. The court has also ordered lasting changes to how the company's Washington pharmacies screen controlled-substance prescriptions. Grocery Dive reported the ruling.