Baltimore’s high-profile lawsuit against the drug companies accused of contributing to the city’s deadly opioid epidemic ended Friday with a whimper.

After being dealt a fatal blow on appeal, the city quietly agreed to dismiss the remainder of the case in a brief court filing. In doing so, the city’s legal team acknowledged that they will lose out on the $152 million won following a jury trial in late 2024.

“After conferring with our counsel, Baltimore made the difficult decision to dismiss the lawsuit against the remaining defendants,” Jonas Poggi, a spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Scott, said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, the Supreme Court of Maryland’s recent rulings leave us no path forward to hold these defendants liable in the courts for their egregious conduct in causing and continuing the opioids crisis in our city,” Poggi said.

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Baltimore can keep the more than $400 million it received in settlements ahead of the trial — still a sizable victory for a community that experienced the highest rate of overdose deaths of any major American city.

But the trial verdict, which was the crown jewel in the city’s victories against pharmacies and opioid companies, is officially gone. A jury of city residents awarded Baltimore $266 million at the end of a seven-week trial against two manufacturers, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, now known as Cencora.

The city argued that the companies failed to halt suspiciously large orders of prescription painkillers, flooding the region with addictive pills that were diverted to the illicit market and eventually pushed users to more dangerous street drugs.

The judge overseeing the trial, Baltimore City Circuit Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill, slashed the jury’s verdict and offered the city a deal: Accept reduced winnings of $152 million or go to trial again. Baltimore’s lawyers took the money but also appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court. The drug companies also appealed.

In a brief order last month, the high court threw out the city’s winnings entirely. The justices had recently rejected a legal theory central to Baltimore’s argument: that the drug companies could be held responsible for causing a “public nuisance” with their products.

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The Maryland Supreme Court held that public nuisance law was not broad enough to encompass social issues like the opioid crisis, especially since there is a complex web of regulations already in place for legal drug distribution.

The decision was a blow to the city’s legal strategy. Legal observers said the case was all but dead. And Friday’s filing, in which the city voluntarily agreed to dismiss the remainder of the lawsuit, made it official.

It was a bitter ending for the city’s high-risk legal strategy that pushed for a trial even as most local governments — and the state of Maryland — chose to enter massive “global” settlements with opioid companies. By proceeding alone, Baltimore won nearly as much in settlements as the entire state will receive as part of a $26 billion deal to end the majority of claims against several pharmaceutical giants.

Cencora did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for McKesson referred back to a previous statement on the Maryland Supreme Court decision, which the company said was supported by the law and the record in the case.