They did get off easy. This is about 3% of J&J's annual profit. I guarantee you they are ordering hookers, blow, and cases of Dom Pérignon in the J&J boardroom after this.

It's also only for cases in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has under 4 million people, and the US has over 300 million, so it's about 1.2% of the US population.

If you extrapolate and assume similar settlements in 49 other states, that would come out to 250% of their annual profits. Which may not happen, but the point is that 3% should be viewed in some kind of perspective.

> This is about 3% of J&J's annual profit

What % of profits made by J&J in Oklahoma? Presumably the risk is that other states could decide that this could be a good way to get income too?

Opioids are a very small proportion of J&J’s sales. I wouldn’t calculate it based on their entire portfolio of cancer drugs.

> The investors think J&J got off easy.

Easy relative to the (amount weighted?) balance of probability. The stock price doesn't speak to whether they got off easy or hard relative to what's just.

Certainty alone is worth a bump in share price.

But it has to override the impact of the ruling. I'm pretty sure if they'd been fined the full $17 billion that the share price would have declined quite a bit.

Only if J&J gets no further judgments after this one.

The market had already priced in all the future judgments, it's not like these lawsuits are a secret.

> The market had already priced in all the future judgments

The market has already priced in what it anticipates the future judgements will be (but that expectation may be wrong; for instance it could be $0—in which case GPs only if there are no future judgements is literally correct—but there may turn out to be substantial future judgements.)

If the market had already priced in all future events, the price would never move.

> If the market had already priced in all future events, the price would never move.

I don't think that holds. Let's say we all knew everything about the future, and we all use it to instantaneously and perfectly compute The Right Price for every security. We all know that this stock will pay out a total of $X in dividends over the next Y years before the company goes out of business, and what all the future prices will be. Time moves forward, we pass a dividend payment. I think the price of the stock has to fall?

But since you know everything about the future, you already know that the company will pay future dividends. That would be instantaneously priced in to your perfect information scenario.

The dividend payment isn't unexpected - we all knew it would happen on that day. But since it's in the past now instead of the future, the stock is going to be paying out ($X - $d) instead of $X in what remains of the company's life.

There could be follow-up judgments that don't behave as the market would expect, and move the price. The opioid epidemic has a long and complex history. I'm not too sure this is the legal end of it for them.