Rite Aid Could Close Up to 500 Stores in Bankruptcy

Following news of a potential bankruptcy filing last month, Rite Aid and its creditors are said to be negotiating the terms of a bankruptcy plan that would include the closure of 400 to 500 of its locations. A report from the Wall Street Journal further stated that the retailer would either sell or let creditors take over the remainder of its more than 2,300 stores across 17 U.S. states.

Rite Aid’s Chapter 11 filing would cover its more than $3.3 billion debt load and pending legal allegations that it oversupplied prescription painkillers, according to a previous report.

The retailer has been named a defendant in lawsuits that alleged that it helped fuel the opioid crisis in the United States. The U.S. Department of Justice in March sued Rite Aid, accusing the pharmacy chain of missing "red flags'' as it illegally filled hundreds of thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances, including opioids, according to a Reuters report, which also noted that Rite Aid is facing lawsuits over opioids by state and local governments around the country. Other pharmacies, drugmakers and distributors have reached nationwide settlements of similar claims totaling more than $50 billion.

Rite Aid has not reached any nationwide settlement, though it has struck some smaller deals, including a $10.5 million agreement with several counties last year, the report said.

In July, Rite Aid was hit with a class action in California that alleges the drug store chain disclosed the personal and health information of millions of customers to major website and social media companies without customers’ express consent, according to a Consumer Affairs report.

The lawsuit claims that when consumers visited RiteAid.com to make a request for a prescription to be filled using the Manage Prescriptions feature, tracking tools including Meta Pixel – invisible to the user but embedded into the website – “secretly” sent sensitive information to Meta, Google, TikTok and other companies.

Employing more than 6,300 pharmacists, Philadelphia-based Rite Aid operates 2,300-plus retail pharmacy locations across 17 states.