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The speed with which the court determined the case reflects its awareness of the opioid problem. But legal experts said its decision would be unlikely to divert attention from the public health crisis. The court will focus on liability shields, he said, an increasingly popular, albeit controversial, bankruptcy strategy.
“However, I am sure that even if the opioid crisis does not appear anywhere in the opinion, the Court will keep in mind that cities, states and individuals are anxiously awaiting these funds. They need to know the answer to this question so they can figure out what to do next,” said Adam Zimmerman, who teaches mass tort law at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.
Although many pharmaceutical companies have been sued for their roles in the opioid epidemic, the Sacklers and Purdue loom large in the story of the complex, decades-long crisis. Their signature drug, OxyContin, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in late 1995, became a game changer in a new market hungry for prescription painkillers. To the medical establishment that was then beginning to recognize pain as the “fifth vital sign”, long-acting OxyContin seemed like a miracle drug.
Purdue is known for lavish sales conferences in which pain relievers trained and employed by the company falsely claimed that OxyContin’s risk of addiction was extremely low. By 2007, Purdue and three of its top executives had paid a $634.5 million fine and pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges for misleading regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s abuse potential.
The hefty fine did nothing to stop Purdue from continuing to aggressively market OxyContin.
Eventually, attention turned to the Sacklers themselves, some of whom served as Purdue board members and made large charitable donations to medical schools and museums. In return, the institutions renamed buildings after the Sacklers. But as the family saga began to appear in books, television series and documentaries, and their notoriety grew, most institutions removed the Sackler name from their properties and disassociated themselves from Purdue’s owners.
