Purdue and Sackler family agree to $7.4bn opioid settlement with US states

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The Sackler family and the opioid maker they founded, Purdue Pharma, have jointly agreed to pay $7.4 billion to settle liabilities related to their role in the opioid crisis, ending months of negotiations after a previous deal collapsed.

The latest settlement, which still needs bankruptcy court approval, is $1.4 billion more than the previous settlement between the parties. . Under the settlement, the Sackler family will pay $6.5 billion over the next 15 years, while Purdue will pay 900 million dollars.

However, while attorneys general across the country have touted the potential multibillion-dollar settlement, the full details of how the payouts will be made are unknown, including whether opioid victims can continue to sue Sackler’s family in the future, and to what extent. would be protected from such litigation by two sticky clauses from the previous agreement.

The full 50-page term sheet could be released next week, a person familiar with the mediation process said.Without that document, questions remain about how the $7.4 billion will be distributed to victims and recovery programs.

Until recently, one member of the Sackler family had not signed the settlement agreement, but in a court filing Monday, mediator Shelley Chapman wrote that the member was finally brought into custody, setting the stage for “various other important aspects of the motion to move forward.”

The drugmaker initially filed for bankruptcy in 2019 in New York federal court to manage claims related to its role. the opioid crisis.

“Families in New York and across the country are suffering tremendous pain and loss from the opioid crisis,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of the officials who helped broker the deal, said Thursday , this massive influx of funds will bring resources to communities in need so we can heal.”

In 2020, Purdue reached an $8 billion settlement with the Department of Justice in which the company pleaded guilty to three federal felony charges. writing and forcing them to write prescriptions for illegal reasons.

Purdue’s latest settlement is one of the largest possible payouts from the U.S. opioid crisis, which has led to more than 600,000 deaths since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The deal could benefit about 140,000 personal injury victims, according to court documents.

The U.S. Supreme Court last summer struck down a previous $6 billion settlement between the Sackler family and creditors, which was negotiated largely during the pandemic was without family members filing for bankruptcy.

“What the Sacklers want, what anybody wants, when you settle something, is to be done with it,” said Bruce Markel, a law professor at Northwestern University, referring to future liability protection. A lot of Sacklers benefited from that. There were kids born after Purdue filed for bankruptcy who are probably still benefiting from the greatness.”

The new deal is structured so that the Sacklers are not automatically protected from liability, but victims must agree not to pursue further legal action to receive payment, according to the New York attorney general’s office.

The Supreme Court ruling left lawyers and companies to decide how to handle so-called “mass tort cases,” where corporate product liability claims totaled thousands of victims and hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

Funds from the Sacklers and Purdue will be used to fund opioid addiction treatment and recovery programs for the next 15 years, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said as part of the deal, and their ownership of Purdue is over.

Sackler’s family did not respond to a request for comment.