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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

#81

Post by ericmcer »

cogman10 wrote: post #5
realce wrote: 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.

deaths of thousands is a massive understatement. Just overdose deaths is probably getting close to a million. But they are also responsible for:

The people who don't OD but have their lives destroyed by opiods.

The family and friends who suffer because someone they know is an addict.

The time, money and energy society has spent trying to help addicts.

All the crimes, victims of crime and criminal justice costs that are a result of addiction.

They didn't kill thousands of people, they killed millions, affected every single person in the country negatively and contributed to the destabilization of our society.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#82

Post by robxorb »

delichon wrote: post #28

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.

This is my gripe with regular news. Science paper? No link. New law bill? No link. Someone made an hour-long speech? 30 second cut, no link to the full speech. Is it almost as if they'd rather we didn't see their sources?

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#83

Post by Barraketh »

prepend wrote: post #70
Barraketh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vic…

IANAL, but I don't think this would help the victims (and incidentally, that could have still happened even with the settlement). If there were a criminal lawsuit of the Sacklers, and if that lawsuit was successful, the seized money would just go to the justice department.

The only way the victims actually see any money is through civil litigation.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#84

Post by thetinymite »

psunavy03 wrote: post #25

For those claiming the Supreme Court is a political institution, I'd like to note that this was indeed a 5-4 decision. But one with Justices in the majority who were appointed by Biden, Trump, Bush 43, and Bush 41, and in the minority who were appointed by Bush 43, Obama, and Trump. It was Jackson, Gorsuch, Barrett, Alito, and Thomas in the majority and Sotomayor, Kagan, Roberts, and Kavanaugh in the minority.

I won't argue against the Supreme Court being a political institution. However, I do think the court is more nuanced than popular opinion realizes. The article below shows a nice graphic of how often justices rule together on non-unanimous decisions.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-co...

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#85

Post by roenxi »

LordKeren wrote: post #29
roenxi wrote: post #10

[flagged]

It is negligent to conflate the impacts of an addictive drug with a vaccine.

I will just annotate that with the observation that at the equivalent point (~4 years) into oxycodone's history I doubt it was well known to be addictive. Wiki suggests it was a "Miracle Drug of the 1930s" and they didn't get nervous about it until the 1970s [0].

And I doubt OxyContin came with the liability waivers that I seem to recall the COVID vaccines having.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone#History

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#86

Post by insane_dreamer »

Barraketh wrote: post #58
realce wrote: 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…

Are the victims themselves getting anything? I thought it was States that were suing.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#87

Post by nickburns »

fock wrote: post #78
jcranmer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

as a non US-person who recently wanted to look at some cases: is there a free way to do this? Or do you have to sign up to the weird ePACER?

You do not have to sign up for anything. SCOTUS opinions are freely-accessible public record.[0]

[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/opinions.aspx

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#88

Post by tiffanyh »

7thaccount wrote: post #3
ronnier wrote: post #2

> Purdue made billions from OxyContin, a widely available painkiller that fueled the opioid epidemic

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.

What responsibility does the FDA have in this?

(genuinely curious, not trolling)

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#89

Post by bumby »

HWR_14 wrote: post #63
SoftTalker wrote: post #12

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..."

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

I read the OP as "professionals should be less easily manipulated than the general public because of their background knowledge on the subject".

Consider whether most would think a mechanic is more or less easily manipulated into unnecessary vehicle repairs.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#90

Post by rayiner »

dataflow wrote: post #19

How is there such a big divide in the court on this? Is the law really this unclear on the matter?

Bankruptcy is a unique creature. It's created directly in the Constitution as a federal system. Bankruptcy is inherently "equitable," which means that judicial decisions are guided by case-by-case considerations of fairness rather than strict legal rules. Bankruptcy courts have wide latitude and discretion to basically do what makes sense in each context.

Here, the majority overturned something the bankrutpcy code approved, because, in its view, the remedy of a non-consensual third-party release conflicted with the structure of the Bankruptcy Code. The dissent disagreed, pointing out there were no express prohibitions on the relief the bankruptcy court had granted, and explaining that, in their view, the bankruptcy court should have been given discretion to authorize such a release if ultimately it would make the creditors better off. Basically the majority was focused on the structure of the Code, while the dissent was focused on the practical fact that the creditors would probably get more money from the Sacklers this way than if they had pursued direct lawsuits against them.

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