Sacklers Threaten to Pull Out of Purdue Pharma Opioids Settlement
Source: New York Times
David Sackler, a former board member of Purdue Pharma, during a video hearing with the House Oversight Committee in December.Credit...House Television, via Associated Press
A scion of the Sackler family, the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma, vowed in court on Tuesday that the family would walk away from a $4.5 billion pledge to help communities nationwide that have been devastated by the opioid epidemic, unless a judge grants it immunity from all current and future civil claims associated with the company. Absent that broad release from liability, said David Sackler, 41, a former board member and grandson of one of the founders, the family would no longer support the deal that the parties have painstakingly negotiated over two years to settle thousands of opioids lawsuits brought by states, cities, tribes and other plaintiffs.
“We need a release that is sufficient to get our goals accomplished, and if the release fails to do that, then we will not support it,” Mr. Sackler declared during the fourth day of fractious testimony in the confirmation hearing for the bankruptcy plan of Purdue Pharma, whose misleading marketing of the prescription painkiller OxyContin is widely seen as igniting the opioid epidemic. Instead, he said he believed the Sacklers would resume fighting all the cases “to their final outcomes” — a process that would be inordinately costly and protracted for everyone involved. The Sackler’s $4.5 billion pledge is the centerpiece of the settlement plan and, without it, the deal will almost certainly collapse.
The money is to be paid over nine or ten years, to begin to cover the extraordinary costs of an addiction crisis that has contributed to the deaths of more than a half-million Americans since the late 1990s. Under the plan’s other major terms, Purdue would be remade into a new public benefit company, whose profits would almost all go to the settlement, and the Sacklers would renounce all involvement. They will, however, be allowed to remain involved in their considerable international pharmaceutical companies, through which they can continue to produce and market opioids for up to seven years, until the companies are sold, to seed the litigation payments.
Another signature feature would be a public repository for more than 30 million documents from Purdue and the Sacklers “so that academics and scholars and families of victims and everyone can look at those documents and understand what can happen when there is a fraud and how intense and how long that fraud can go on,” said Jayne Conroy, a lawyer who began pursuing Purdue in 2002, and who testified on Monday in favor of the plan. A federal bankruptcy judge had been expected to confirm the plan at the end of these hearings, particularly after a majority of states that had earlier opposed the deal expressed support for it last month. But objections to the legal shield for the Sacklers have become the sharp focus of much of the testimony.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/health/sacklers-purdue-opioids-settlement.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
(he must have known something was up)
And, as you know, I have a lot of history here regarding my John Oliver posts that goes back years... 
And I also wondered if there was a connection, though he goes into so much detail, these shows must take weeks in the planning and research. Though he did decide to air it right now... 
He may have been following the negotiations/hearings but also what a number states were doing regarding rejecting the agreement for various reasons (e.g., the settlement amount was not financially large enough given the assets the family had and how badly the crisis had hit their state and the fact that it would absolve them of culpability).
I expect they may even consider going the J&J route (how they have been handling the baby powder, for example, this strategy - https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/exclusive-jj-exploring-putting-talc-liabilities-into-bankruptcy-sources-2021-07-18/)
And I can't imagine how what J&J is doing is legal. 
and I had been curious about what was happening with J&J and saw that... 
