By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Purdue Pharma and the owners of the Sackler family have reached a new $7.4 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits alleging that the painkiller OxyContin caused a widespread opioid addiction crisis in the United States, the U.S. said. Thursday several state attorneys general.
The settlement was announced nearly seven months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the company's earlier attempt to resolve the claims in a bankruptcy settlement that would have given the Sacklers broad civil immunity from opioid lawsuits in exchange for a payment of up to 6 billion dollars.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Sacklers, who did not file for bankruptcy, were not entitled to legal protections intended to give bankrupt debtors a “fresh start.”
Under the new agreement, the Sacklers will pay $6.5 billion, with another $900 million coming from Purdue, without fully settling lawsuits from states, local governments or individual victims of the opioid crisis. Those who do not wish to join the agreement are free to file lawsuits against the Sacklers, who have said they will vigorously defend themselves in court.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the settlement would help close the opioid crisis.
“It's not just about the money,” Tong said. “There's not enough money in the world to fix it.”
The latest agreement aims to address a drug addiction crisis that has led to more than 700,000 opioid overdose deaths in the United States over the past two decades.
Purdue said Thursday it was working to incorporate the deal into a new bankruptcy plan.
“We are very pleased that a new agreement has been reached that will deliver billions of dollars to compensate victims, mitigate the opioid crisis, and provide life-saving overdose treatment and rescue medications,” Purdue said in a statement. release.
Purdue is one of many drugmakers, distributors, pharmacy operators and others who have collectively agreed in recent years to pay about $50 billion to settle lawsuits and investigations by state and local governments that accuse them of helping fueling a deadly epidemic of opioid addiction in the US
Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019 amid thousands of lawsuits accusing it and members of the Sackler family of fueling the epidemic by deceptively marketing its highly addictive painkiller.
The company pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and misbranding related to the marketing of OxyContin in 2007 and 2020. Members of the Sackler family denied wrongdoing but expressed “regret” for OxyContin's role in the opioid crisis. .
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
