Dallas County's Parkland Health & Hospital System is among 29 Texas-based hospitals suing a host of drug companies, accusing them of creating an epidemic that has burdened health care systems with the steep costs of treating patients with opioid-related conditions.

The civil lawsuit is the first of its kind in Texas, and Parkland has led the charge, said attorney Darren Nicholson, who along with Warren Burns is leading representation for the hospitals.

The lawsuit, which will be filed in Dallas County, accuses over 40 opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers — including Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma, McKesson Corp. and Abbott Laboratories — of negligence, fraud and civil conspiracy.

The more-than-300-page lawsuit says the drug companies made false assurances about the addiction risks of prescription opioids and used deceptive marketing to "dramatically increase demand for and sale of opioids and opioid prescriptions."

It says the drug companies wanted to increase sales by convincing doctors to prescribe opioids not just for post-operative pain or severe pain for cancer patients, but also for "common chronic pain," knowing that opioids were addictive.

Citing The Washington Post's pain pill database, the lawsuit says opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies supplied enough hydrocodone and oxycodone for each Dallas County resident to have 28 pills a year from 2006 to 2012.

Dallas County sued a slew of doctors and drug companies last year over their alleged roles in the opioid epidemic. A few months later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, accusing the company of fueling the opioid crisis.

But hospitals have reason to pursue their own claims against opioid companies, Nicholson said. They’re seeking reimbursement for the “enormous” costs they’ve incurred as a result of the opioid epidemic, he said.

"Every time someone who comes into the ER who's OD'ing, every time there's an infant that's born addicted to opioids ... and there's no one else to pay for it, it's Dallas County tax dollars being used to treat that," he said.

Nationally, that totals billions of dollars for hospitals, Nicholson said.

But the hospitals also want to make sure they have the funds available to them in the future to treat the opioid crisis.

The lawsuit seeks monetary relief and says that the full measure of the damages is still being calculated but exceeds $1 million.

Parkland approached the Dallas-based Burns Charest law firm about six months ago, and other hospitals later joined the effort, Nicholson said.

Nicholson said Parkland has a special responsibility because, as a public hospital, it deals with taxpayer dollars. It’s on the “front lines” of treating the opioid epidemic in the state and county, he said.

“Parkland has a real strong interest in protecting taxpayer money, and in making sure that it has the resources it is going to need for the next decade,” he said. “Regardless of what happens with any settlements in Texas or nationwide, if the hospitals don’t receive the funding that they need, the problem’s not going to go away.”

Every dollar Parkland spends to "address the defendants' opioid epidemic is a dollar that is taken away from another person in need of medical care," the lawsuit says.

The Parkland system is one of three public hospitals named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The other two are Palo Pinto General Hospital in Mineral Wells and Guadalupe Regional Medical Center in Seguin. The other plaintiffs are private hospitals, which bear the same burdens of the opioid epidemic, Nicholson said.

“If you’re a hospital, public or private, and someone comes into your facility and they’re in critical condition, you have an obligation under federal law to treat them — regardless of whether or not they can pay you, regardless of whether or not they have insurance coverage,” he said. “The real issue with this obligation is who’s ultimately going to pay for it?”

While the hospitals' lawsuit will be the first of its kind in Texas, hospital systems in states such as Arizona, and West Virginia have brought similar claims against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

Last week in Oklahoma, a judge returned a $572 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson, ruling that its marketing and distribution of painkillers caused a crisis in the state.