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

641–650 of 691 posts

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#641

Post by soperj »

chasil wrote: post #200
rootusrootus wrote: post #187

I could see shielding from future civil liability as an option, but only after a true bankruptcy has occurred. Liquidate everything, and by that I mean everything , and then you can move on with your life. Definitely no shielding money in offshore accounts. If you're not willing to do that ... well, see you in court. Over and over, because every individual you hurt should have a chance to come at you with a liability…

One problem of which I was unaware is that the Sackler family has largely fled the United States. Pursuing their assets introduces vast complexities of international law. "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…

Didn't stop them with Julian Assange or Kim Dotcom, and these people are actually evil.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#642

Post by jjtheblunt »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #207
chasil wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem of which I was unaware is that the Sackler family has largely fled the United States. Pursuing their assets introduces vast complexities of international law. "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…

> "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…

> Can you imagine a member of Congress or the President saying this?

definitely. The 2012 STOCK Act is routinely violated by members of congress who insider trade on information from congressional committees before laws are enacted. that money the openly argued about the legitimacy of in congress and Pelosi, for one, and Tommy Tuberville, for another argued that it should be allowed. Pelosi later changed her stance, but continues insider trading. you can find datasets for all this at (no relation...just interesting data) https://quiverquant.com

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#643

Post by shadowgovt »

Supermancho wrote: post #310
shadowgovt wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indubitably. It's easy to lose sight of (if one doesn't read the rulings regularly) the fact that SCOTUS's job is to come to rational and deliberate rulings grounded firmly in textual and common law dating back over a thousand years. Even when one doesn't agree with the conclusion, one rarely sees a ruling that isn't reasonable (though sometimes seeing the reason involves entertaining a fact pattern other than t…

> one rarely sees a ruling that isn't reasonable Not so true of this incarnation of SCOTUS. It's amazing when they dont delay or rule (by majority) via ridiculous interpretation.

The interpretations break with precedent but they are rarely ridiculous.

As detestable as I find the outcome, Roe v. Wade built a right to privacy out of whole cloth where none existed before, and whether that was good law has been hotly debated ever since it was decided (https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ref...). It's within the purview of SCOTUS to go "This was bad lawcraft done by our predecessors, and we reverse it based on this reasoning..."

We can disagree with their reasoning, but my main point is you rarely see a ruling from SCOTUS that is nakedly "Because I said so," even though that's de facto the power they have. The initial Roe decision was shaky. "That was a shaky decision, so we have reversed it" was at most equally shaky. It's hard to argue that one is well-reasoned and the other not (though I think there's room to disagree on what facts the two Courts considered).

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#644

Post by shadowgovt »

bee_rider wrote: post #314
shadowgovt wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indubitably. It's easy to lose sight of (if one doesn't read the rulings regularly) the fact that SCOTUS's job is to come to rational and deliberate rulings grounded firmly in textual and common law dating back over a thousand years. Even when one doesn't agree with the conclusion, one rarely sees a ruling that isn't reasonable (though sometimes seeing the reason involves entertaining a fact pattern other than t…

This is going too far I think. There are some partisan hacks on the bench and the institution’s legitimacy is in pretty bad shape. But in this case they got an issue that didn’t have as much partisan alignment so maybe they did some good work.

Most of the current legitimacy damage stems from a perception that the Court has members that are arbitrating law over bribery while simultaneously engaging in behavior that looks suspiciously coercive. I think that's a major issue, but it's a bit orthogonal to the question of whether they use sound judgment to arrive at rulings like, say, US v. Rahimi 22-915.

(The other source, to my eyes, of questions of legitimacy is that the appointment of three judges in a narrow amount of time under one party's dominance of Congress and the Presidency has fundamentally shifted the "flavor" of the way the Court interprets law. Rather than bringing their legitimacy into question, that's rather the point of the process by which the US appoints Justices and the length of their term; the Court's "personality" is stable over long stretches of time, but it can shift and it does go through eras. People complaining about the new era don't seem to realize that for many Americans, the previous era was strange times that called to question in their minds the legitimacy of the Court).

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#645

Post by vkou »

lupusreal wrote: post #172
inasio wrote: post #112

Matt Levine has covered this several times in the past, worth reading. From memory, the Purdue family had put away their money in legally sheltered arrangements, so even an unfavorable decision (to the Sacklers) would likely not be able to claw back much money. The previous deal traded the risk of trial for a perceived as decent compensation. My read is that the majority in the supreme court disagreed that you can al…

Lawyers are fixated on the money for obvious reasons, but the money will never really fix what the Sacklers did (particularly for the many victims who are now dead.) Restitution is largely a farce and we should be focusing on retribution.

But a scorched earth destruction of their assets would be an appropriate end result.

We don't put killers in prison because 10 years will make the dead person alive again.

We do it because we don't like them.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#646

Post by naasking »

chasil wrote: post #445
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…

Consider a few issues: - the foremost among the perpetrators are dead - the rest of the family is culpable, but less so - the settlement money will now be entirely repurposed for legal defense - meanwhile the victims get nothing Does justice demand punishment or compensation?

> Does justice demand punishment or compensation?

Which outcome provides the greatest disincentive against anyone else even contemplating doing something like this ever again?

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#647

Post by naasking »

vkou wrote: post #645
lupusreal wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers are fixated on the money for obvious reasons, but the money will never really fix what the Sacklers did (particularly for the many victims who are now dead.) Restitution is largely a farce and we should be focusing on retribution.

But a scorched earth destruction of their assets would be an appropriate end result. We don't put killers in prison because 10 years will make the dead person alive again. We do it because we don't like them.

We actually do it because they're a danger and people tend to age out of criminal impulses.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#648

Post by vkou »

naasking wrote: post #647
vkou wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a scorched earth destruction of their assets would be an appropriate end result. We don't put killers in prison because 10 years will make the dead person alive again. We do it because we don't like them.

We actually do it because they're a danger and people tend to age out of criminal impulses.

If there was zero risk of recidivism, we still would.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#649

Post by BobbyJo »

chasil wrote: post #445
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…

Consider a few issues: - the foremost among the perpetrators are dead - the rest of the family is culpable, but less so - the settlement money will now be entirely repurposed for legal defense - meanwhile the victims get nothing Does justice demand punishment or compensation?

It generally demands deterrence. Helping the victims out is great, and the proceedings should do that as best they can, but the largest benefit that can be brought to society as a whole is showing that doing these kinds of things will be bad for you.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#650

Post by BobbyJo »

darawk wrote: post #389
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-…

Yes of course there are realistic ways to prescribe opioids routine and safely. Purdue did not invent opioids, what they did is patent a particularly strong formulation, and then work to undermine the cultural taboo in medicine around their use. That last thing was their crime. There isn't, at this time, any other way to treat serious pain (in all cases). Opioid prescriptions will continue to be an unfortunately nece…

I could not agree more. Fentanyl enforcement is obviously not feasible to anyone that has been, or known, an addict. Its incredibly cheap to buy, and you can store enough to kill 1000 people in a bag in your pocket.

You might as well have cops trying to arrest the pollen in the air.

Post reply on HN