Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy protection, a move sure to shrink the drugstore chain's bricks-and-mortar footprint as it grapples with falling sales, mounting debt and a slew of lawsuits alleging it helped fuel the opioid epidemic by knowingly filling illegal prescriptions.

The Chapter 11 filing late Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey not only provides $3.45 billion in new financing to support Rite Aid through reorganization, it also pauses opioid litigation brought on by cities, counties and states, as well as any individual claiming to have been harmed by the retailer's conduct.

The long-expected filing was the company's "only sensible option," said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData. It "simply isn't a viable entity," he wrote in an email.

Court filings list about $8.6 billion in total debt as of June and total assets of $7.6 billion. It also posted a net loss of $306.7 million in its most recent quarter, nearly three times the $110.1 million recorded in the year-ago period.

It's also facing a wave of lawsuits alleging it knowingly skirted legal requirements and oversupplied painkillers. In the United States, prescription opioids have claimed more than 300,000 lives since 2000.

In 2017, more than 1,000 opioid-related cases were consolidated in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. In March, the Justice Department filed a complaint alleging the drugstore chain and its employees ignored "obvious red flags," and filled hundreds of thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances, including opioids, that were "medically unnecessary." It also alleged Rite Aid intentionally deleted internal notes written by its pharmacists about suspicious prescribers.

The company has called the government claims "hyperbolic" in court documents and is asking a judge to dismiss the suit.

The consolidated opioid cases will be handled under the supervision of the bankruptcy court moving forward, Rite Aid said. It was not immediately clear Monday whether the bankruptcy case would affect the upward of $30 million opioid settlement Rite Aid reached in 2022 with the West Virginia attorney general's office. Other retailers with pharmacy operations have settled the lawsuits that were consolidated in federal court in Cleveland. Walgreens and CVS reached settlements of $10 billion with multiple states and Kroger agreed to pay $1.2 billion.

Rite Aid has closed dozens of stores in the past two years. It's unclear how many of the remaining 2,100 locations or 45,000-member workforce will stay. Jeffrey S. Stein, who was appointed chief executive as part of the restructuring, said the bankruptcy process allows it to accelerate efforts to reduce its real estate footprint.

"The important actions we are taking today will enable us to move ahead as a stronger company," he said in a statement Sunday.

But it runs the risk of pharmacy deserts in some areas, Saunders said, "unless other chains step in to acquire store assets."

The company was founded in 1962 by Alex Grass as a single drugstore known as the Thrift D Discount Center in Scranton, Pa. After years of acquisitions and new store openings in five states, Grass changed the name to Rite Aid in 1968 and took the company public. The chain first hit $1 billion in sales in 1983 and enjoyed decades of prolific growth.

But in 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed accounting fraud charges against several former senior executives, including the founder's son and the company's former chief executive Martin Grass. In the late 1990s, executives overstated the company's income, failed to report certain transactions and enriched themselves at the expense of shareholders. Grass was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.

Rite Aid also has struggled to keep up with Walgreens and CVS, which have benefited from pharmacy and health-insurer acquisitions and mergers. Meanwhile, retail giants like Amazon and Walmart have beefed up their pharmacy and medical treatment offerings, and offer more competitive pricing in store aisles on household essentials like toothpaste and body wash. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and the newspaper's interim CEO, Patty Stonesifer, sits on Amazon's board.)

The company saw some lift during the pandemic, benefiting from coronavirus vaccine rollouts. But inflation has also taken a toll. Consumers have pulled back on discretionary spending, leading front-of-store sales at Rite Aid to decline by 4.4 percent in the latest quarter.

"An increased focus on price in the market does not play to Rite Aid's strengths and the continued expansion of value-focused players like Dollar General into rural areas is giving people more scope to buy essentials elsewhere," Saunders said.

Rite Aid stock fell 16.8 percent Monday, closing at 65 cents; shares have lost 80 percent of their value since January.