Jurors heard deposition testimony from a Giant Eagle executive as the civil trial against chain drugstores initiated by Lake and Trumbull counties entered its third week in the downtown Cleveland courtroom of U.S. District Judge Daniel A. Polster.

Video deposition was taken from James Tsipakis, executive vice president of pharmacy / health and wellness for HBC / Giant Eagle and played for jurors on Monday.

Polster, meanwhile, ordered another chain executive — Brad Nelson, director of health and wellness practice compliance of Walmart — to do a live video deposition for jurors scheduled for Monday.

And, a brief filed Tuesday indicated that a drug task force commander — Trumbull County sheriff’s Capt. Tony Villanueva — may soon be taking the witness stand.

In that brief, the plaintiffs’ attorneys asked the judge to allow Villanueva to testify about details of two of his investigations related to the diversion of opioids in Trumbull County.

“Plaintiffs want to question Capt. Villanueva regarding two investigations he conducted while working as a detective on the TAG drug task force,” the brief stated.

Before becoming commander of the task force in early 2017, Villanueva worked as a detective for Howland police and these drug investigations occurred in 2010 and 2012.

The first investigation by Villanueva was about a defendant who was getting prescribed oxycodone and hydrocodone from different local doctors, the brief stated. That defendant “had been prescribed 2,340 pills during a five-month period from September 2009 through January 2010 by 13 different doctors … (defendant) went to six different pharmacies in Trumbull County to get those prescriptions filled.”

The 2012 investigation by Villanueva involved a patient who had obtained thousands of prescription opioids from December 2011 through February 2013 from various pharmacies in Trumbull County. At the same time, the brief stated that the pharmacies were dispensing other cocktail drugs (such as muscle relaxers) to the same patient.

The lawyers for the drugstore chains had argued that plaintiff lawyers should not be able to question Villanueva about these investigations because he was not investigating the wrongful conduct of the pharmacies, the brief stated.

The counties’ lawyers, however, still wanted Villanueva to go over these issues because he went to these defendant pharmacies during the scope of the investigation.

Court records did not indicate if Polster had ruled on whether to limit Villanueva’s testimony.

The civil jury trial is expected to continue for about six weeks. This proceeding is being watched nationally as a possible template other communities may use in lawsuits against drug companies and pharmacies, court experts have said. Close to 3,000 lawsuits filed in federal courts have been consolidated under Polster’s supervision.

In 2018, Trumbull and Lake counties filed a joint lawsuit over the number of prescription painkillers dispensed in the counties between 2012 and 2016. The amount equaled to 400 pills for every Trumbull County resident.

Among the main defendants are the three national pharmacy chains and regional Giant Eagle. Defendant Rite Aid settled with the plaintiffs earlier this year. The company paid Trumbull County $1.5 million. The amount paid to Lake County has not been disclosed.