A lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of Kentuckians against the makers of OxyContin is the first to include estates of those who died from overdosing on the drug.

        Five Kentucky residents and the estates of two other Kentuckians filed a lawsuit Thursday in Clay County, seeking $3 million for a substance-abuse center and other unspecified damages.

        Janet Abaray, the Cincinnati lawyer who was the lead attorney for the Bengals' season-ticket holders' class action suit, will join the suit, she said Friday.

        Ms. Abaray, of Lopez & Hodes, said she is working with a number of local residents who have struggled with addiction to the prescription narcotic.

        The Kentucky suit is the fourth since May filed against Purdue Pharma, the makers of the drug.

        All of the lawsuits — a class action filed in West Virginia, a suit filed by the state's attorney general and, more recently, a suit totaling more than $5 billion filed out of Virginia — allege the drug was marketed deceptively so doctors overprescribed it.

        “These lawsuits will call into question the way prescription drugs are marketed and sold,” said Bill Hayes, a Middlesboro lawyer in the Kentucky case. Mr. Hayes is working with Peter Perlmann, a Lexington attorney who is a past president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and well known for litigation on vehicle crashes.

        The plaintiffs include: Rodney Howard, a 28-year-old timber company owner who became addicted to the painkiller while using it to recover from surgery, along with his wife Bridgette and their two children; Michael Lee Daniels, a 32-year-old coal miner who was prescribed the painkiller for knee and back pain; the estate of Gus Dale Robbins Sr., a wealthy coal operator who overdosed on the drug in December 1999; James Presley Craig, who became addicted to the drug while taking it for back pain; George Allen Saylor, a 30-year-old coal miner who took the drug for back pain; Robin Griffin, a 29-year-old housewife; and the estate of Johnny Johnson Wynn, who took the drug for back pain, became addicted and overdosed in October 2000.

        The Kentucky case seeks class action certification, which would allow others to join later. Mr. Hayes said a number of people had been in contact with his firm about joining the case.

        Purdue Pharma officials have called allegations made by the other suits “baseless.”

        Purdue Pharma did not return phone calls seeking comment on Friday about the Kentucky case.

        OxyContin is a schedule II narcotic and contains oxycodone hydrochloride, a highly addictive morphine-like drug. The drug is intended for people suffering moderate to severe pain. Cancer patients with chronic pain often take the drug. Abusers snort, ingest or inject Oxy, which is encased in a time-release capsule. The time-release capsule is chipped away by abusers so the drug, which produces a heroin-like high, can get into their system quicker.

        Also named in the suit are Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories, which assisted in the design, testing, manufacturing, labeling, marketing and distribution of the drug; Ali Sawaf, a Harlan urologist who was charged in February with illegally prescribing the drug, and Pineville Community Hospital, which supplied the drug through its pharmacy.

        The drug began receiving attention in early spring when police made more than 200 arrests in eastern Kentucky.

        Dr. Sawaf, who is in the Harlan County Jail, was arrested Feb. 1 and charged with six counts of illegally prescribing drugs. In the complaint filed Thursday, Dr. Sawaf is credited with supplying four of seven plaintiffs with OxyContin.

        The widespread abuse of the drug led one health-care company to refuse to prescribe it.

        Lois Baker, chief executive officer of Mountain Comprehensive Health Corp. in Whitesburg, said the clinics stopped prescribing OxyContin in January.

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