BBC North America correspondent, Peter Bowes, has revealed that the company’s share price rose after the ruling was announced because investors believed the fine would have been significantly higher.

Following the announcement of the fine, the company’s shares rose by more than 5%. This ensured a $13.5 billion market cap gain within a few hours.

Jared Holz, the healthcare strategist for financial services company Jefferies, said: “The expectation was this was going to be a $1.5bn to $2bn fine, and $572m is a much lower number than had been feared.”

The fine follows a recent scandal where Johnston & Johnson have been accused by the Oklahoma state government of carrying out a marketing campaign of several years which under-emphasised the addictive nature of opioid painkillers. Johnson & Johnson were also accused of promoting the benefits of opioids, which fuelled the current opioid crisis in the USA.

According to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opioids have been involved in nearly 400,000 overdose deaths in the USA from 1999 to 2017. According to Oklahoma’s state lawyers, 6,000 people in the state have died from opioid overdoses since 2000.