Supreme Court rules Sackler family can be held responsible for opioid epidemic

The family back one of the most addictive substances in the world, sold to patients by their own doctors who downplayed its harmful effects, is not protected from liability for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Sackler family's bankruptcy settlement, which would have sent billions of dollars to victims of the opioid epidemic, is invalid. The settlement would have shielded the Sackler family from personal liability, and the court's ruling Thursday means they are not immune from any wrongdoing related to their company, Purdue Pharma, and its liability for opioid addiction caused by the aggressive drive of OxyContin.

Purdue's now-dismissed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection was filed in September 2019 after several American state, local and tribal governments, as well as more than 60,000 individuals, sued Purdue seeking damages for manufacturing and selling OxyContin. The highly addictive painkiller has directly led to the deaths of more than 225,000 people between 1999 and 2022, according to National Institute on Drug Abuseand has contributed significantly to the nearly 650,000 total opioid deaths over the same time period.

Although Purdue and the Sacklers claimed they didn't know how addictive OxyContin was, a 2006 Justice Department report listed a series of tactics Purdue used to keep selling OxyContin, even when the company and the family they learned that people were crushing and snorting the pills for narcotic effects as early as the year it was released. The report found that Purdue spent millions on marketing, giving away free samples and offering bonuses to sales representatives to persuade doctors to prescribe OxyContin to their patients.

The company paid for fancy dinners and trips for the doctors. targeted physicians who were not pain specialists by inviting them to medical conferences and pain management seminars. and promoted OxyContin to patient support groups. Purdue distributed misleading materials and information to convince doctors and patients that the pain reliever was safe to use for even the slightest pain and promoted higher doses. Purdue also filed false reports with the Drug Enforcement Administration in an attempt to cover up how much it knew about OxyContin and other addictive opioids.

After a four-year investigation by the Department of Justice, the company pleaded guilty to felony misusing its OxyContin trademark in 2007 and paid more than $600 million in fines and other costs. Prosecutors recommended felony charges against three top Purdue executives, but DOJ officials under the George W. Bush administration shot down the idea. The family has remained almost untouched ever since.

The original three Sackler brothers, all physicians, bought Purdue in 1952 and developed OxyContin in 1996. Six Sacklers sat on the company's board of directors, including chairman Richard Sackler, who oversaw the company's aggressive marketing strategy.

The court ruled that the Sackler family is not exempt from personal liability.

As part of the bankruptcy settlement with more than 2,000 governments as well as 60,000 individuals, the Sacklers agreed to contribute $6 billion of their funds to fight opioid addiction, $750 million of which will go directly to victim compensation. Purdue will be restructured as a public benefit corporation that will use its profits to fight the opioid crisis.

The company initially agreed to pay $4.5 billion in the settlement when it filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York. Although Purdue itself filed for bankruptcy—which restructured its operations and reduced its liabilities—the Sackler family used a third-party release to shield itself from personal liability. Although it initially approved the plan and granted non-consensual third-party releases to the Sackler family, the SDNY subsequently reversed the approval, bankruptcy courts were not authorized to grant such non-consensual third-party releases, resulting in Purdue overturning its $6 billion settlement. The case went to the Supreme Court when arguments were heard on December 4, 2023. As a result of Thursday decision, individual tortfeasors may seek damages from the Sacklers.

Nearly 95 percent of the settlement's claimants approved the $6 billion figure and may receive between $3,500 and $48,000 through the settlement.

“It's overwhelming, the support for this deal, both among people who don't like the Sacklers, among people who think the Sacklers are pretty much the worst people on Earth,” Justice Elena Kagan said during oral arguments on December. “They have negotiated a deal that they believe is the best they can get.”

Ronald Mann, a Columbia Law School professor who specializes in bankruptcy cases, pointed to the overwhelming support the settlement has among plaintiffs for the reasons the court did so.

“It's very difficult to overturn this plan, because to overturn this plan is actually taking $6 billion out of the hands of people who are really, really badly hurt,” Mann said. Rolling rock. “It's money they'll probably never get if they get it. The lawyers will make huge sums of money to recover it, so it might just be a windfall for the lawyers to litigate for years.”