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, as in this case.
“That’s clearly the sticking point,” said Regina LaBelle, former acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and current director of the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute, “being able to bring action against the Sacklers personally in the future.”
While most parties have agreed to these terms, some are still holding out. A federal bankruptcy judge, Shelley Chapman, who is mediating the settlement, has asked for an extension until the end of the month. A stay against other claims during the settlement negotiations is set to expire in early March.
Previously, the Sacklers offered $4.55 bn, but eight states and the District of Columbia objected to that amount.
The family has now added nearly $1 bn, as well as proceeds from the sale of international drug companies.
The additional funds would not go to victims, like Stephanie Lubinski, but to governments for law enforcement and health care costs associated with opioids. Victims are set to receive a total of $750 million – about $5,000 each.
More than 500,000 Americans have died from overdoses in the past two decades.
“Any of these people who lost their lives or were affected by addiction, no amount of money is going to compensate them. No amount of money,” LaBelle said.
“Absolutely, it’s not enough – the $750 million is a joke,” said Ryan Hampton, the former co-chair of the creditor’s committee representing victims in the settlement, who is in recovery himself. “It should have been double that, at a minimum.”
But if a settlement isn’t reached, it seems unlikely that this many victims will be able to form a new settlement before other claims are made. Those whose lives were harmed by opioids “stand to lose the most in these negotiations if they fall apart,” he said.
“There is going to be a settlement or some sort of a civil action that the Sacklers are going to have to take. The underlying factor here is whether victims are going to receive any sort of direct compensation out of that settlement.”
If this settlement dissolves, other states could bring their own claims, edging out victims entirely, he said.
“There’s a possibility that one state recovers all of the sack of money and doesn’t share it with the rest of the states and certainly doesn’t share it with the victims who have claims,” Hampton said.
“There needs to be a settlement and a conclusion to this bankruptcy that does not exclude the $750 million for victims. That would be a crime in itself if this entire thing falls apart and victims receive nothing.”
The bankruptcy process is, “unfortunately, not ideal for meting out justice for people in this type of litigation in particular, where you have real people with human stories who have been affected by the actions of this company,” LaBelle said.
“I can’t believe we’re this far down the road and we’re still trying to get justice to people who are affected,” she said. But “if we’re able to resolve this and get money to states and local governments and individuals so that we can start building the type of addiction system that we need in this country, then we can start moving forward.”
In this settlement, Purdue would be restructured as a public benefit corporation that produces naloxone, a medication reversing opioid overdoses with soaring prices for harm reduction groups last year.
“Reducing the harms associated with opioid use disorder certainly has to be part of the calculus,” LaBelle said.
“It’s an ongoing saga that we haven’t gotten to the end of yet, and we need to start healing people. We need to start moving forward.”
As Troy Lubinski’s opioid use disorder continued through the years, it affected everything. He stopped making mortgage payments, unbeknownst to his wife, and they lost their house. He pawned any possessions of value.
When he finally went into substance use treatment, Troy told the doctor he was taking 40 pills a day – a revelation that shocked his wife.
“I just fell on the floor, in a fetal position,” Stephanie said. “How did I not know? How was I not there for him? How did I not know this was all going on?”
But the treatment didn’t keep him from opioids for long, and after that, he became paranoid and delusional, Stephanie said. “I felt so bad for him, because that was his reality. And you can’t defend yourself against things that aren’t real.”
Troy moved away, and Stephanie filed for divorce to protect what little she had left, though she still refers to him as her husband. “I still felt like he was gonna come back to us,” she said through tears.
Troy did move back, and for a brief, hopeful time, it seemed he had finally changed. But then something shifted in him once more. Troy took his own life in September 2020.
Stephanie had already joined the settlement by then, but after Troy died, she needed his story to be told. “I needed to write the letter, you know, instead of just a claim number,” she said.
“I believe the Sackler family should know what their greed has caused. They should know the name, Troy Lubinksi, and the many, many others that have lost their lives to OxyContin,” she wrote in a letter to the judge presiding over the settlement.
But she didn’t join the settlement to memorialize Troy. Nor is she doing it for herself.
In 2017, Stephanie was diagnosed with a rare stage-4 cancer. She was given three to five years to live.
She is pressing the Sacklers for restitution because she wants to leave something behind for their kids, who were now young adults.
“I filed for them,” Stephanie said. “My kids deserve it after everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve lost.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be around to see anything. But I wanted them to have something.”
