A judge said Friday that he planned to approve a deal for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family who own the company to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids, allowing money to start flowing to victims as soon as next spring.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane said he would spell out his reasoning in a hearing next week.
Here’s what to know.
The Sackler family members will pay billions and can’t put their names on any more museums
Members of the Sackler family have been cast as villains in an overdose epidemic that has been linked to 900,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999, including from heroin and illicit fentanyl.
While most opioids were sold by other companies, many people have described the marketing of OxyContin, which was sold starting in 1996, as part of what touched off the crisis.
With legal troubles mounting, family members left the company’s board of directors in 2018 and have not received any payouts from it since then. But in the decade prior to that, they received more than $10 billion from the company that has been in the family for decades. About half that money went to pay taxes.
Under the deal, they’ll contribute up to $7 billion and cease to own the company.
They’ll also be barred from being in the opioid business in other countries and agree not to have their names put on any institutions as part of charitable contributions. Many museums and universities have already cut ties with the family.
Purdue will cease to exist in its current form
The plan also calls for changing Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue’s name to Knoa Pharma and making it an entity dedicated to the public good with a board appointed by state officials.
It could still produce OxyContin, but the vision is that the company’s profits will address the nation’s opioid crisis.
It also would be subject to independent monitoring, as Purdue has been for the past several years.
The company agreed to make public millions of internal documents — including many that would normally be subject to attorney-client privilege.
It also still faces the formality of sentencing as part of a guilty plea it negotiated with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 after admitting it paid doctors through a speakers program to induce them to write more prescriptions and that it had an ineffective program to keep the drugs from being diverted to the black market.
Some victims and their survivors are in line for payouts
There’s been a series of other opioid settlements over the past decade worth about $50 billion in total. Most of that money, like most of the Purdue settlement, is required to be used to deal with the overdose and addiction epidemic.
But none of the other major ones have one feature that’s in Purdue’s: payouts for individual victims and their survivors.
Purdue’s deal calls for about $850 million to go to victims, with more than $100 million of that dedicated to the care of children who were born suffering from withdrawal.
This part of the settlement is expected to be paid next year, while amounts going to government entities can be paid over 15 years.
But the individual payouts are a frustration for victims. Those who qualify by showing they were prescribed OxyContin are expected to be able to collect around $8,000 or $16,000 each, depending on how long they took the powerful painkillers.
Sackler family members could face more lawsuits
A judge approved a previous Purdue settlement plan in 2021, but it was undone by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found Sackler family members would have improperly received protections from lawsuits though they themselves hadn’t filed for bankruptcy protection.
This time, an appeal is less likely, in part because by the time this week’s hearing on the plan was complete, no one represented by a lawyer was objecting to it. A handful of individual victims who do not have lawyers involved were the only ones who kept pushing back.
In response to last year’s Supreme Court ruling, the new settlement allows lawsuits against Sackler family members over opioids to be filed by entities that don’t opt into the deal.
The city of Baltimore, for one, has indicated it may sue.
