Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 691 posts

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#391

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #377
nonethewiser wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberal vs. conservative has always been the wrong take. The stronger dividing line is textualism vs pragmatism. In fact Scalia famously said this coming from a textualist perspective which I think most people can agree with even if they hate him: “ If you’re going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not always going to like the conclusions you reach.” This seems absol…

>The stronger dividing line is textualism vs pragmatism. They should be doing what is right for the American people . There are clearly laws on the books today which infringe on individual freedoms (abortion), harm society as a whole (citizens united), etc. The 'justice system' is supposed to be the government branch protecting the little guy from powerful elites. I've not often seen that. I see the opposite. If the…

> The 'justice system' is supposed to be the government branch protecting the little guy from powerful elites

The justice system. Not necessarily the courts. Our courts definitely weren’t designed to be a political body.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#392

Post by saint_fiasco »

loeg wrote: post #334
esd_g0d wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is the only place in the world AFAIK where you will get prescribed opioids for something as trivial as a wisdom tooth extraction (kind of like one of the cases cited). It is also the only place in the world AFAIK going through the opioid epidemic. Every other country in the world has got the problem of painkillers figured out. So it can't be that complicated.

Wisdom teeth extraction is far from trivial and opioids are a very reasonable prescription for pain from that surgery.

Objectively, opioids are prescribed much less often outside the US.

Subjectively, I got four wisdom teeth extracted in two sessions of two extractions each. Both times I only needed generic acetaminophen to manage the pain.

Perhaps an US surgeon have insisted on doing it all in one session, in which case I would have found the pain and discomfort intolerable and opioids would have made more sense.

In any case, they should probably figure out why their patients are in more pain than the patients of foreign surgeons and fix that. It could be something silly like them being less gentle during surgery because they are used to their patients being on opioids.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#393

Post by bumby »

HWR_14 wrote: post #249
bumby wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> whether most would think a mechanic is more or less easily manipulated into unnecessary vehicle repairs. That's different. This is closer to a mechanic using a part from Company X in the repairs of their customer's car, because a rep told them it was more durable.

You're right, that's a better example. But wouldn't you expect the mechanic to have a more discerning eye in that case as well? The more contextual knowledge you have, the better you should be able to tell legitimate claims from BS.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#394

Post by armada651 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #342
csdreamer7 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "In a brief filed on behalf of the relatives of Mortimer Sackler, most of whom are based overseas, lawyers warned of “significant litigation costs and risks” in seeking to enforce any foreign court judgments against the family if the settlement were thrown out." I understand your point, but basically they are saying: "We hid all our assets to evade the law. Give us immunity from criminal money laundering evasion an…

> "We hid all our assets to evade the law. Give us immunity from criminal money laundering evasion and we will only pay part of what we likely would have owed." > We have those overseas money reporting laws that make it difficult for Americans to get bank accounts overseas. Let's use them! This is conflating two things. It is not criminal to move money offshore, and nothing suggested any money laundering occurred, be…

> And at Sackler levels of money you don't have to remain a US citizen, hence absolving the reporting requirements if they went that direction.

Renouncing your citizenship because you owe the US government money is generally not seen as a valid reason by the US government to renounce your citizenship.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#395

Post by Terr_ »

doublet00th wrote: post #308
shawndrost wrote: post #280

I understand people who think the Sacklers are villains who destroyed lives, Purdue should be shut down, and we should transform the legal regime around opioids. I understand people who think Purdue should continue, the status quo is OK, and the Sacklers are not [simply] villainous. I don't understand people who think the Sacklers are villains who destroyed lives, but Purdue should continue operating more-or-less as-…

I think there's a misunderstanding in what the settlement is about. As part of Purdue's bankruptcy, the Sackler family is voluntarily providing 6 billion dollars to help settle claims opioid victims have brought against Purdue Pharma. As a condition to provide the 6 billion dollars, the Sackler family has asked the bankruptcy judge to not even allow any new suits against the Sacklers related to the Opioid epidemic. T…

To try to illustrate the (bad) principle with a starker hypothetical:

1. Scrooge McDuck owns a thousand different corporations that are restaurants and eateries.

2. A one-taco-stand company is in bankruptcy court, after recklessly inflicting severe food-poisoning on a dozen customers.

3. Scrooge McDuck says: "Out of the goodness of my heart, I will charitably donate $X of my personal funds to help these poor unfortunates... If you give me personal immunity to any lawsuits somehow involving recent food-poisoning problems anywhere."

4. The dozen hospitalized taco-eaters are puzzled but OK with this, since they'll at least get something. The judge shrugs and things move forward.

5. Meanwhile a million other customers of other restaurants see the news on their phones, which they have out because they're stuck on their toilets with raging diarrhea. Plus maybe a few whistleblowers that can't get work anywhere because Scrooge blacklisted them.

6. All of them are justifiably outraged that their rights to seek justice/compensation have been (partly) signed-away in the bankruptcy of some unrelated tiny taco stand case that they didn't--couldn't--participate in.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#396

Post by dang »

legitster wrote: post #179

I find the Supreme court decisions to be fascinating reads and overall much more interesting and complicated than most news services make them out to be.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40811187. Nothing wrong with your post but I wanted to pin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40811187 to the top of the thread, and this subthread is a bit generic.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#397

Post by dmix »

dwallin wrote: post #329
legitster wrote: post #120

This is a more complex case than I thought, and the dissent argument is actually very powerful and convincing: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-124_8nk0.pdf Basically, the original judge did a good job - the settlement plan was reasonable and widely popular. And the Sackler family being released from liability by putting billions of personal dollars into the payment fund meant more victims would get mor…

I disagree. The dissent focused way too much on emotional appeals. It shouldn’t matter if the remedy was popular amongst the primary parties if the law doesn’t allow for such a remedy, “it was popular” is not a solid legal footing. If we want to make sure that the victims of people like the Sacklers can get some justice then let’s actually write some laws for that purpose. Let’s remove the loopholes that let them mak…

> If we want to make sure that the victims of people like the Sacklers can get some justice

This isn't just about the Sacklers either, this could potentially impact a lot of other important cases in the future once the law is more well defined.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#398

Post by janalsncm »

Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. More damage than any serial killer or mass shooter. In my mind they should be considered public enemies 1 through N. I sincerely hope they face civil and criminal liabilities for what they’ve done.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#399

Post by dylan604 »

wmf wrote: post #343
dylan604 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not sure what other retribution you're suggesting. There's always public lynching if that's what you're after, but we've kind of decided that is not a good idea in modern society

They could be imprisoned.

Isn't that a form of punishment instead of retribution?

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#400

Post by dylan604 »

lesuorac wrote: post #371
lostdog wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jail. Jail would be reasonable for purposefully poisoning tens of millions of people.

Point of order. Jail is for people not convicted of crimes. Prison is for convicts.

To those in jail, I doubt it matters
Post reply on HN