A judge said Friday he intends to approve the deal OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma And members of the Sackler family who own the company are set to settle thousands of lawsuits over opioid toll, allowing money to start flowing to victims as soon as next spring.
US Bankruptcy Court Judge Shawn Lane said he would explain his reasons at a hearing next week.
Here’s what you should know.
It was members of the Sackler family Cast as villains In an overdose epidemic that has been linked to 900,000 deaths in the United States since 1999, including from heroin and illicit fentanyl.
While most opioids were sold by other companies, many people described their effects on drugs Marketing of OxyContinwhich were sold starting in 1996 as part of what led to the crisis.
As legal problems mounted, family members left the company’s board in 2018 and have not received any money from it since. But in the decade before that, they received more than $10 billion from a company that had been in the family for decades. About half of that amount went to pay taxes.
Under the deal, they will contribute up to $7 billion and stop owning the company.
They will also be banned from working in the opioid business in other countries, and agree not to put their names on any organizations as part of charitable contributions. Many museums and universities They have already cut ties with family.
The plan also calls for Purdue’s Stamford, Connecticut-based company to be renamed Knoa Pharma and made a public-interest entity with a board of directors appointed by state officials.
It can still produce OxyContin, but the vision is that the company’s profits will address the country’s opioid crisis.
It would also be subject to independent monitoring, as Purdue has been for the past few years.
The company agreed to release millions of internal documents, including many documents normally subject to attorney-client privilege.
It is also still facing Formality of government As part of the guilty plea, she pleaded with the US Department of Justice in 2020 after admitting that she paid doctors through a speakers program to get them to write more prescriptions, and that she had an ineffective program to prevent drugs from being diverted to the black market.
There has been a series of Other opioid settlements Over the past decade its total value is about $50 billion. Most of these funds, like most of the Bordeaux settlement, are required to be used Dealing with the epidemic of overdose and addiction.
But none of the other major programs have one feature that Purdue has: paying reparations to individual victims and their survivors.
The Purdue deal calls for about $850 million to be allocated to victims, with more than $100 million of that going to care for children born suffering from withdrawal.
It is expected that this part of the settlement will be paid next year, while the amounts owed to government agencies can be paid over a period of 15 years.
But individual payments are frustrating for victims. Those who qualify by showing they have been prescribed OxyContin are expected to be able to collect about $8,000 or $16,000 each, depending on how long they have been taking the powerful painkiller.
A judge approved a previous settlement plan in Purdue in 2021, but it was reversed by a US Supreme Court ruling Which found that members of the Sackler family would have improperly obtained protection from lawsuits even though they themselves had not filed for bankruptcy protection.
This time, an appeal is less likely, in part because by the time the hearing on the plan ended this week, there was no one represented by an attorney to object to it. A handful of individual victims who did not have attorneys involved were the only ones who continued to respond.
In response to last year’s Supreme Court ruling, the new settlement allows lawsuits against Sackler family members over opioids to be brought by entities not involved in the deal.
The city of Baltimore, for example, has indicated it may file a lawsuit.