The US supreme court will hear oral arguments on Monday on whether members of the wealthy Sackler family can receive immunity from civil prosecution under a 2019 bankruptcy deal agreed on with Purdue Pharma, the former manufacturer of prescription painkiller OxyContin.
Under a court reorganization plan, Sackler family members who controlled the Oxycontin maker were granted immunity and did not have to declare personal bankruptcy in exchange for a $6bn settlement, paid out over 10 years, to a fund created to offset costs created by the opioid dependency crisis that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
According to court filings, 95% of creditors in the Purdue bankruptcy case approved the plan. But several states, Canadian municipalities and Indigenous tribes, plus more than 2,600 individuals, are opposed.
Highly vocal opioid activists opposed to the deal argue that under “third-party release”, neither members of the Sackler family nor Purdue officials can ever be sued in relation to Purdue and Oxycontin, which was marketed as “non-addictive”, and that those in charge were not required to admit wrongdoing.
Opposition to Sackler immunity includes the US Trustee Program, a component of the justice department that oversees bankruptcy cases, which joined a petition to the court to review the deal. The program argued that the bankruptcy court does not have the authority to release the Sacklers from legal exposure and the releases “deprive tort victims of their day in court without consent”.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, also has said the “bankruptcy court did not have the authority to deprive victims of the opioid crisis of their right to sue the Sackler family”.
The case under review, known as Harrington v Purdue Pharma LP, comes 16 years after the company pleaded guilty in 2007 to a felony count of misbranding OxyContin and was fined $600m.
Over the summer, the supreme court paused Purdue’s bankruptcy settlement on an emergency basis when the justices agreed to take up the case, which could have far-reaching consequences for other corporate bankruptcies where company owners or officials are granted similar immunity, including cases involving the Boys Scouts of America and the Catholic church.
But under the terms of the paused bankruptcy deal, about 130,000 people, many of whom lost family members to the opioid crisis, would be entitled to about $3,500 to $48,000 per claim, minus legal fees, according to the Wall Street Journal. Billions more would go to state and local governments to support opioid-related health programs.
Deal opponent Ellen Isaacs, who lost her 33-year-old son Ryan Wroblewski to a drug overdose, filed an amicus brief with the court, arguing in part: “No Special Protection for Billionaires”.
“The Sackler releases are special protection for billionaires. That ugly fact is true. First, the Sackler releases are special protection,” she wrote, noting that the US solicitor general pointed out to the court that the Sacklers got “a release from liability that is of exceptional and unprecedented breadth”.
Moreover, Isaacs wrote, family members received that protection without declaring bankruptcy and in fact got more protection from the deal than they would have if they had.
after newsletter promotion
“The fact that the protection for the Sacklers is special, and not ordinary, is the reason why this case is in this court,” she wrote. “The Sacklers got special protection because they’re billionaires. That fact is so ugly that people sometimes deny it.”
But about 60,000 people affected by Purdue opioid products argue that the settlement “represents a watershed moment” and offers the “best (and perhaps only path forward)”.
“Save for one personal injury appellant, the actual victims here want this plan, want the releases, and want closure, not the opportunity for endless, damaging, and assumedly futile litigation against the Sacklers,” they argued in a filing.
Other said that the existing bankruptcy agreement “is needed – and needed now – to provide monetary relief to long-suffering victims of the opioid epidemic – and also to prevent more families and communities from suffering the same fate.”
But in 2021, to the Guardian, Isaacs said: “Purdue and the Sacklers caused a genocide; they weaponized the medicine cabinets of the US.” She said the company “had made billions of dollars – the blood money of our children” and she wanted to see the Sacklers in civil and criminal court.
“No swanky prison, no TVs, no Bernie Madoff, Martha Stewart specials,” she added. “Put an ankle monitor on them and put them out in the community to help clear up the mess.”