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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

#281

Post by dylan604 »

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.

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

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#282

Post by voidfunc »

shadowgovt wrote: post #263
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.

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…

Lol, they're also quite ideological. Don't fall for the trap that these people are enlightened philosophers. They have a lot of flaws in their own right.

Ask good lawyers about their thoughts on SCOTUS Justices, it's not always peachy.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#283

Post by esd_g0d »

legitster wrote: post #238
esd_g0d wrote: post #226

What share of the guild do the medical providers that prescribed the opioids to their patients have? There would be no opioid crisis if none were willing to do it.

Scott Alexander had a very interesting writeup about his experiences: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudo...

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.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#284

Post by tunesmith »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #139
raizer88 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had lost a family member to drug abuse I would want justice (ie. jail time) not money.

> I would want justice (ie. jail time) not money Retribution not restitution [1]. “Justice” in this context is ambiguous. [1] https://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/1-5-the-purpose...

I have a hard time with the concept of retribution alone, but I think if it is phrased in terms of modeling societal standards and demonstrating to others that this behavior is unacceptable, it is still valuable to society. I guess you can mark that under "deterrence", but it's less about sending a signal to future would-be criminals, and more about communicating and demonstrating societal standards to the entire society at large.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#285

Post by dang »

legitster wrote: post #174
EnergyAmy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you misinterpreted what they said. We should be putting guilty people in jail, even if they're rich and powerful.

[flagged]

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#286

Post by dang »

ein0p wrote: post #225
legitster wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you a part of the Sackler family? Otherwise I don’t see how you could have misinterpreted what I said. Tell me, how many rich people went to jail for the fraud that caused the 2008 financial crisis? See what I mean now?

Please don't cross into personal attack regardless of how provocative another comment is or you feel it is.

Edit: Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait generally? It looks like your account has been doing this repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#287

Post by whycome »

rootusrootus wrote: post #209
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…

Considering the patience the US has with getting justice against other individuals who have fled our jurisdiction, we could do the same here. We also have an enormous amount of influence in the financial sector in other western nations, so we could at least make their lives less lavish and comfortable. Throwing up our hands and declaring it an unsolvable issue just encourages others to misbehave and then escape the s…

Hey, it's not like they shared copyrighted movies on a server or something.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#288

Post by dang »

nickff wrote: post #143
ein0p wrote: post #129

There will be people like Sacklers until we start putting them away and throwing away the key. We do need to put rich people in jail at least every now and again, if for no other reason than to demonstrate we're not a banana republic.

> "We do need to put rich people in jail at least every now and again, if for no other reason than to demonstrate we're not a banana republic." And to that end, the USA must demonstrate that it's totalitarian and abuses people's rights?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

(squidbeak's reply is a nice example of following this guideline - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40812196)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#289

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

legitster wrote: post #260
7thaccount wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I looked into things, the fines they were going to pay is a tiny slap on the wrist compared to the obscene money they made. They can put the billions in an account and use just some of the interest for the fines. The biggest hit to them so far was having their name removed from some museums. Let that sink in. They've lost some slight prestige with other wealthy folks.

They took in something like $11 billion and were going to fund something like $6 billion. As far as purely pragmatic solutions go this was not a bad deal for victims. There are a lot of members of the Sackler family and a lot of them have a lot of money despite personally not being connected to the Purdue business in any way. Even if they could all be connected to wrongdoing actually getting money from, like, the sec…

$6 billion dollars is a lot of money, but it's also just half of what they profited from what was effectively mass murder. Is that really something you want to let people buy their way out of for less than they profited?

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#290

Post by _DeadFred_ »

shadowgovt wrote: post #263
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.

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…

Haha. Sure. Like when they make up Qualified Immunity which is a completely made up special status/protection given by the Courts, not by law or common law but abusing the concept of Judicial immunity and expanding it to all governmental officials.

See Pierson v. Ray (1967)

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