OxyContin victims fight for their share in Purdue bankruptcy case

theguardian.com:

Stephanie and Troy Lubinski met when they were teenagers, and they were married for three decades. Troy was big-hearted, kind, the best fisherman around, a devoted father who cared for the kids during the day after long night shifts as a firefighter.

But he had back pain that began when he worked in construction and then grew worse over the years. His doctor prescribed OxyContin, and that was the beginning of the end.

“Everything just went downhill,” Stephanie said.

Troy suffered a decades-long battle with opioid use disorder. The family lost everything – their home, their belongings, even one son’s football championship rings – as Troy’s condition spun out of control.

Stephanie is one of more than 138,000 claimants alleging that the Sackler family and its company, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, contributed to the ongoing opioid epidemic. The Sacklers deny wrongdoing.

Facing about 3,000 lawsuits, Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019, but not before Sackler family members took more than $10 bn from the company over the course of a decade.

This case, brought by states and victims of opioids, is now being settled in bankruptcy court.

But it is proving difficult to settle. A previous agreement was blocked in December. After intense negotiations, the Sackler family is now offering $6 bn in settlement negotiations, paid out over several years.

The family insists on civil liability protection, however, which would essentially mean they can never be sued in civil courts over opioids ever again – an unusual step that scuppered the last deal.

Such measures are typically used in bankruptcy court to help restructure a company, but they aren’t used to protect the owners from liability when they’re not declaring bankruptcy themselves,