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Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are doctors so easy to manipulate? They learn about addiction in medical school. Why would they believe a pharmaceutical company saying "...oh but this opioid is not addictive..."

It seems that in the US there has been a trend to "de-regulate" or let businesses regulate themselves. It works for a while, but eventually it seems to go south. I think "regulatory capture" is the term. I think of Boeing being allowed to inspect there own planes.. I think drug manufactures submit there own studies, as the FDA doesn't have a budget to test all the things themselves. The opiod manufactures are organiz…

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Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. From the NY Times: > In a 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a majority of the justices held that the federal bankruptcy code does not authorize a liability shield for third parties in bankruptcy agreements. Justice Gorsuch was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

My lineup was extracted from an AP story. Which is correct? https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioi...

The decision itself:

> GORSUCH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, ALITO, BARRETT, and JACKSON, JJ., joined. KAVANAUGH, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN, JJ., joined.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complicated than that. They knew it was killing people and turning thousands (millions) into addicts and they kept pushing doctors to use it at all costs. I'd recommend the John Oliver special on it.

Why are doctors so easy to manipulate? They learn about addiction in medical school. Why would they believe a pharmaceutical company saying "...oh but this opioid is not addictive..."

What makes you sure doctors are "so easy to manipulate"? Is the general public more immune? Are there many professions that are more immune?

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. From the NY Times: > In a 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a majority of the justices held that the federal bankruptcy code does not authorize a liability shield for third parties in bankruptcy agreements. Justice Gorsuch was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

My lineup was extracted from an AP story. Which is correct? https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioi...

The NY times. The AP story seems to have just been corrected.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#66

Thank you. For my purpose as a reader it is editorial incompetence that the article neither provided that link, nor the name of the case to make it easy to lookup.

At least it is for SCOTUS decisions to find the decision quickly ( https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/23 has a list of all opinions from the current time, updated live as they are announced). It's really painful when you've got coverage of state court cases where you have neither the case name nor the court it was filed in nor the docket nor any document nor anything that would let you figure any of th…

Yeah SCOTUS is pretty good about putting their decisions out there. Sometimes too good at it ;)

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#67
post #5
post #4

>The court on a 5-4 vote ruled that the bankruptcy court did not have the authority to release the Sackler family members from legal claims made by opioid victims. As part of the deal, the family, which controlled the company, had agreed to pay $6 billion that could be used to settle opioid-related claims, but only in return for a complete release from any liability in future cases. Is this actually a positive outcom…

Positive outcome. They earned hundreds of billions from their actions which resulted in the deaths of thousands. Giving them permanent immunity was insane.

> resulted in the deaths of thousands.

The number the Supreme Court used in its decision was 247,000 deaths over a twenty year period. That's the verified number and therefore almost certainly lower than reality.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what your personal views are here. If you wanted the outcome of the case to be at least some money going towards opioid treatment, then this decision could jeopardize that outcome. However, if you thought that the Sackler family being able to escape any personal liability despite the myriad of evidence of many of their involvement in stoking the opioid epidemic— and they still got to keep a very sizeabl…

I wouldn't be opposed to similar outcomes as the Chinese baby milk scandal in the end.

To save everyone the google, several people went to jail with terms ranging from 5 to 15 years (after reduced sentences). Two people were executed.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. From the NY Times: > In a 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a majority of the justices held that the federal bankruptcy code does not authorize a liability shield for third parties in bankruptcy agreements. Justice Gorsuch was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

My lineup was extracted from an AP story. Which is correct? https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioi...

NYT was right and AP has now corrected theirs. Reload and check errata at the bottom.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#70
post #4

>The court on a 5-4 vote ruled that the bankruptcy court did not have the authority to release the Sackler family members from legal claims made by opioid victims. As part of the deal, the family, which controlled the company, had agreed to pay $6 billion that could be used to settle opioid-related claims, but only in return for a complete release from any liability in future cases. Is this actually a positive outcom…

Negative outcome. Some important points that the article here did not emphasize: 1) The Sackler family was not actually a party to this litigation. They came to the table (with most of the settlement money) specifically to get these so called '3rd party releases'. 2) Purdue is basically broke. It's also an LLC. Thus, in order to go after the Sackler family's money, you basically have to claw back money that Purdue pa…

> Thus, in order to go after the Sackler family's money, you basically have to claw back money that Purdue paid out to the family over the years.

Or you can find them personally, directly, criminally liable and their profits the result from a criminal conspiracy.

Personal crimes aren’t protected by the “veil” of LLC, so any assets of the family could be liable, after criminal conviction, for any civil claims from victims.

At least, I think.

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