Baltimore will have to wait a little longer to learn whether more money is coming in its long-running lawsuit against drug distributors that contributed to the city’s opioid crisis.

The city won $266 million in damages late last year at a jury trial against two drug companies, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen. But a judge was set to decide if Baltimore could receive even more money for opioid “abatement,” which is designed to force defendants to clean up a mess that they caused.

Baltimore City Circuit Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill was expected to rule Friday, but the judge’s office said Friday afternoon that the decision was still pending and could come early next week instead.

The city’s legal team requested billions of dollars in abatement money to cover harm reduction and treatment programs. Baltimore’s lawsuit claimed that drug companies helped fuel the city’s deadly opioid epidemic, sending millions of painkillers to pharmacies here with little regard for whether they were medically necessary.

In recent years, Baltimore has experienced the highest rate of overdose deaths of any major city in America, according to a series of articles on the scope of the issue in The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times last year.

Jurors agreed with the city in November, assigning most of the responsibility for the epidemic to McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, which shipped millions of opioids to Baltimore city and county between 2006 and 2019, according to federal drug dispensing data.

The companies argued the jury’s decision was “plainly illogical” and asked Fletcher-Hill to throw out the verdict or hold a new trial.

Madeleine O’Neill is a Baltimore-based freelance journalist.