WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that would protect members of the Sackler family that owns the company from civil lawsuits over opioid tolls.
The judges seem to be alternately reluctant to break a comprehensively negotiated agreement, but also suspicious of somehow rewarding the Sacklers.
Agreements made with state and local governments and victims will provide billions of dollars to fight the opioid epidemic.
The Sacklers will contribute up to $6 billion and relinquish ownership of the company, but retain billions more.
The company will emerge from bankruptcy as a separate entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.
The high court put the settlement on hold over the summer, in response to objections from the Biden administration.
Justice Elena Kagan seemed to sum up the questions that troubled some judges.
“It seems like the federal government is holding back on that compared to the vast majority of claimants,” Kagan said.
But then, he also said that in bankruptcy, protection against lawsuits has a price.
“You get relief when you put all your assets on the table,” he says. “The Sacklers didn’t come anywhere to do that.”
Arguments lasted nearly two hours in a packed courtroom, the doors of which were blacked out in memory of retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who died Friday.
Chief Justice John Roberts offered a recollection of the first woman to serve on the court. “He changed the world,” Roberts said.
Jen Trejo holds a picture of her son Christopher as he is comforted outside the Supreme Court Monday, Dec. 4, 2023, in Washington. AP
Outside the courthouse, a small but vocal group of protesters opposed the Purdue Pharma deal.
“Shame on the Sackler,” one banner read. “No Sackler immunity on any $$,” read another.
The issue for the judge was whether the legal shield provided by bankruptcy could be extended to people like the Sacklers, who did not declare bankruptcy themselves.
Lower courts have issued conflicting rulings on the issue, which also has implications for other major product liability lawsuits settled through the bankruptcy system.
The US Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, argued that bankruptcy law did not allow protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the solution.
Justice Department attorney Curtis Gannon told the court Monday that negotiations could resume, and possibly lead to a better deal, if the court halts the current deal.
Supporters of the plan say third-party releases are sometimes needed to falsify deals, and federal law does not impose a ban on them.
“Forget the better deal,” lawyer Pratik Shah, who represents victims and other creditors in bankruptcy, told the judge. “There is no other agreement.”
Lawyers for the more than 60,000 victims who supported the settlement called it a “pivotal moment in the opioid crisis,” while acknowledging that “no amount of money can fully compensate” victims for the damage caused by the misleading marketing of OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller.
A lawyer for the victims who opposed the settlement called the provisions dealing with the Sacklers “special protections for billionaires.”
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed to lean more toward the opposing side, saying the Sacklers’ insistence on shielding against all lawsuits “caused this problem.”
Instead, Judge Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a vote to let the deal go ahead. He said the government is trying to prevent payments to victims and their families, as well as money for prevention programs “in exchange really for this somewhat theoretical idea that they’ll be able to get money back down the road from the Sacklers themselves.”
Tombstone-shaped signs, with information about people who died from using OxyContin, line a security fence outside the Supreme Court Monday, Dec. 4, 2023, in Washington. AP
OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst for the nationwide opioid epidemic, persuading doctors to prescribe the painkiller without regard to the dangers of addiction.
The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company have become synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills prescribed and used are generic drugs.
Opioid-related overdose deaths continue to rise, reaching 80,000 in recent years. Most are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
Purdue Pharma’s settlement will be among the largest reached by a drug, wholesaler and pharmacy company to resolve outbreak-related lawsuits filed by state, local and Native American tribal governments and others.
Those placements have totaled more than $50 billion.
But Purdue Pharma’s settlement will be one of two so far that includes direct payments to victims from the $750 million pool.
Payments are expected to range from $3,500 to $48,000.
Sackler family members are no longer on the company’s board of directors, and they have not received payments from him since before Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy.
However, in the decade before that, they were paid more than $10 billion, about half of what family members are said to have paid in taxes.
The decision in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, 22-859, is expected in early summer.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
