Opioid maker Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family have reached a tentative deal over their role in the opioid crisis that’s expected to deliver up to $250 million to New York, Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday.
The pending settlement agreement, reached with 14 other states, amounts to $7.4 billion. The family members who own the company will pay out $6.5 billion over 15 years, while the Stamford, Connecticut-based drugmaker will pay an additional $900 million in a one-time payment.
The deal is still being finalized and requires court approval, James said. Once the deal goes through, New York’s opioid settlement fund to support opioid treatment and recovery programs statewide could reach up to $3 billion.
“The Sackler family and their company Purdue who helped spark the opioid crisis decades ago have for years avoided accountability,” James said in a press conference Thursday. The deal represents the nation’s largest settlement to date with individuals that fueled the opioid crisis, she added.
Purdue Pharma, which sold the powerful painkiller OxyContin starting in the late 1990s, used aggressive marketing strategies for its opioid products despite the drug’s addictive qualities, fueling a decades-long overdose crisis in the U.S. States, local governments and individuals affected by the opioid epidemic filed thousands of lawsuits against the company, prompting it to file for bankruptcy in 2019.
Purdue reached a bankruptcy plan in 2021 that would have provided members of the family with legal immunity from any future civil lawsuits over their role in the opioid epidemic. But the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the bankruptcy agreement in June, saying that the Sackler family members could not be shielded from future lawsuits because they did not personally file for bankruptcy.
Under the new agreement, the Sacklers aren’t entitled to protection from future lawsuits. However, some of the Sacklers’ payments will be set aside for future lawsuits brought by other jurisdictions and individuals who choose not to sign on to the current deal, according to the attorney general’s office.
James secured the settlement alongside attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia.
