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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

#91

Post by jcranmer »

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?

Every document at SCOTUS level is freely available, although you have to know the docket number to get all of the briefs correctly. SCOTUSblog in practice is a more accessible interface to the docket, since you can easily look up by case name: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/terms/ot2023/, e.g., the full docket for the case in this article is here: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/harrington-v-pur...

If you want to deal with non-SCOTUS federal cases, your choices are to use PACER or to use RECAP (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/), where the documents may be available. E.g., the appeals court docket for this case is at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67448481/in-re-purdue-p..., note that many documents aren't available because no one made it free via RECAP.

If you want to deal with state courts... good luck! Every state has a different system with different level of pains to track down.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#92

Post by jakewins »

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?

The opinion and dissent are actually relatively approachable and lay out exactly what the disagreement is about: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-124_8nk0.pdf

It seems to come down to whether the sentence "[A chapter 11 bankruptcy plan may] include any other appropriate provision not inconsistent with the applicable provisions of this title" means "A plan can contain anything anyone can imagine as reasonable as long as it isn't expressly forbidden" or "A plan can contain other types of provisions that follow the same general theme as the concrete list given just before this sentence".

The Sacklers argued that the law says they can take away other peoples rights to sue them, since the law says these bankruptcy plans can include "anything", and the majority opinion of SCOTUS was that that's not the right way to read the law.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#93

Post by BoredPositron »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #75
BoredPositron wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is choice. That's the whole point of the discussion you might not like the choice you would have to take but it still is. If you want to convey that you get extorted do so but use the right words.

Force does not mean "no choice." >to make something happen or make someone do something difficult, unpleasant, or unusual, especially by threatening or not offering the possibility of choice[0] (notice or here) >If someone forces you to do something, they make you do it even though you do not want to, for example, by threatening you.[1] >to make someone do something that they do not want to do > I was forced to take…

Yeah, still nobody can "force you to trust" anything. They might force you to comply with something but they can't force you to trust. That's just nonsense.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#94

Post by BoredPositron »

roenxi wrote: post #60
BoredPositron wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words have specific meanings that should accurately reflect the nuances of the situation at hand. You can write your comment without emotional exasperation or maybe not...

Words do indeed have specific meanings. If someone didn't get vaccinated then the government would start basically attacking basic human rights. In particular rights of freedom work, assemble, free travel, freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to practice a religion, etc (and to maintain their own health I might add) which turn up in some pretty hefty documents like the UN Declaration of Human…

You wrote "force to trust". That's highly different from what you are writing now.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#95

Post by radlad »

LordKeren wrote: post #23
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..."

It’s easy to overlook that OxyContin was very effective. Even a doctor acting in good faith was likely to prescribe the drug— because it worked well. It really did help people struggling with pain management. The downside, of course, was that Purdue pharma was knowingly misleading doctors on the addictiveness of the drug. Also the amount of doctors that were willing to turn a blind eye to the clear signs of addiction…

> Also the amount of doctors that were willing to turn a blind eye to the clear signs of addiction is very worrying.

No disagreement, but I think it's worth considering how stigmatized addiction is in our society. I expect many patients would hide any signs of addiction from their doctors - especially since it might result in losing their supply of OxyContin, or worse, their career.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#96

Post by Y_Y »

iwontberude wrote: post #76
bloopernova wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because doctors believe studies and health system policies pushed aggressive treatment of pain. And our unequal society forces a lot of people to damage their bodies in the pursuit of happiness (i.e. earning money). That damage becomes chronic pain. And unfortunately, painkillers often have a euphoric effect. So people might use that effect to escape the grinding reality that they are trapped within. Consider how pop…

What a positively wonderful way to look at life.

I can't make sense of this either as sarcastic or earnest. I though GP was a fairly neutral (and imho accurate) appraisal.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#97

Post by RavingGoat »

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…

I would think civil forfeiture could be used to take all their assets if not then the drug dealers in my town need to each form an LLC.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#98

Post by ben7799 »

thetinymite wrote: post #84
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...

That's really interesting, because it shows even the most liberal and most conservative justices still are in agreement the majority of the time.

Just reading news articles I would never have thought Sotomayor and Alito ruled the same 63% of the time.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#99

Post by hinkley »

LordKeren wrote: post #14
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…

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…

They should have their wages garnished until the end of time.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#100

Post by Barraketh »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #86
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…

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

Well, it's a bankruptcy, so anyone can file a claim. The states have, but so have the victims and their families directly (as a class).
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