The Supreme Court is considering the legality of Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement, which would protect the Sackler family from lawsuits over their role in the opioid crisis.
The settlement would have the Sacklers provide up to $6 billion to address the crisis in exchange for immunity from future lawsuits.
The government argues that the settlement allows the Sacklers to shield their fortune and releases them from claims based on fraud and willful misconduct. (Trending: Tucker Reveals The Moment He Became A Full-Blown Trump Supporter)
Nearly 247,000 people died from overdoses on prescription opioids between 1999 and 2019.
Prosecutors claimed in their brief that a settlement “allows the Sacklers to shield billions of dollars of their fortune while extinguishing, without payment, claims alleging trillions of dollars in damages.”
“Equally troubling, it releases the Sacklers from claims based on fraud and other forms of willful misconduct that could not be discharged if the Sacklers themselves had filed for bankruptcy,” continued the brief.
Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed previously that, “Bankruptcy is inherently a creature of competing interests, compromises, and less-than-perfect outcomes.”
“Because of these defining characteristics, total satisfaction of all that is owed—whether in money or in justice—rarely occurs. When a bankruptcy is the result of mass tort litigation against the debtor, the complexities are magnified because the debts owed are wide-ranging and the harm caused goes beyond the financial. That is the circumstance here,” continued the court.
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Ellen Isaacs, who lost a son in the opioid epidemic, called the Sacklers, “the billionaire masterminds behind a criminal enterprise that caused a national tragedy.”
“The Sackler releases are special protection for billionaires,” charged her attorney.
Adding, “That ugly fact is true.”
“No amount of money can bring back a beloved family member lost to addiction or undo the traumas routinely caused by opioid addiction,” the brief states. “The confirmed reorganization plan, however, 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.”
The settlement is opposed by some, but others argue that it is needed to provide relief to victims of the opioid epidemic.
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