24 States Mount Legal Fight To Block Sackler Bid For Opioid Immunity

For months, members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, have portrayed their bid for immunity from future opioid lawsuits as a kind of fait accompli, a take-it-or-leave it fix to a legal morass.

In exchange for what amounts to a legal firewall for the Sacklers and their remaining empire, members of the family have offered to forfeit control of their bankrupt drug company and pay $4.2 billion from their private fortunes.

Judge Robert Drain, who is presiding over the case in White Plains, N.Y., has suggested such a deal may be desirable and achievable along these broad lines.

A negotiated settlement could pre-empt years of costly litigation — the Sacklers deny any wrongdoing — and might accelerate financial aid to communities struggling to recover from an opioid epidemic that has already cost more than 450,000 lives.

But a growing group of public officials and activists are mounting a last-ditch effort to derail the plan, describing it in legal briefs as an unethical, and possibly unlawful, use of the bankruptcy court's power.