End of OxyContin legal saga in sight as judge approves settlement deal

A federal bankruptcy court judge on Friday said he will approve OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma’s latest deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids that includes some money for thousands of victims of the epidemic.

The deal overseen by US Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane would require members of the Sackler family who own the company to contribute up to 7.0 billion US dollars (£5.32 billion) and give up ownership.

The new agreement replaces one the US Supreme Court rejected last year, finding it would have improperly protected members of the family against future lawsuits.

The judge said he would explain his decision in a hearing on Tuesday.

The deal is among the largest in a series of opioid settlements brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies that totalled about 50 billion dollars (£38 billion).

It could close a long chapter – and maybe the entire book – on a legal odyssey over efforts to hold the company to account for its role in an opioid crisis connected to 900,000 deaths in the US since 1999, including deaths from heroin and illicit fentanyl.

Lawyers and judges involved have described it as one of the most complicated bankruptcies in US history.

Ultimately, attorneys representing Purdue, cities, states, counties, Native American tribes, people with addiction and others were nearly unanimous in urging the judge to approve the bankruptcy plan for Purdue, which filed for protection six years ago as it faced lawsuits with claims that grew to trillions of dollars.

Purdue lawyer, Marshall Huebner, told the judge that he wishes he could “conjure up 40 trillion dollars or 100 trillion dollars to compensate those who have suffered unfathomable loss.”

But without that possibility, he said: “The plan is entirely lawful, does the greatest good for the greatest number in the shortest available timeframe.”

Christopher Shore, a lawyer representing a group of individual victims, said in court on Friday that the settlement is a better deal than taking on Sackler family members in court.

“Some Sacklers are bad people,” he said, “but the reality is that sometimes bad people win in litigation.”

Most of the money is to go to state and local governments to be used in their efforts to mitigate the damage of the opioid epidemic.

Overdose death numbers have been dropping in the past few years, a decline experts believe is partly due to the impact of settlement dollars.