Members of the billionaire Sackler family that own Purdue Pharmacy LP have offered to pay as much as $6 billion to revive the OxyContin maker’s imperiled opioid settlement, a court-appointed mediator said in a report Friday.
The new settlement offer would see the Sackler family pay at least $5.5 billion with additional money contingent on certain asset sales, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, who is overseeing the talks, said in her report. The sum is more than $1 billion greater than what is called for under Purdue’s existing settlement proposal.
A final deal hasn’t been reached, according to the mediator.
The Sacklers and a handful of state attorneys general have been in mediation for the past two months after a New York judge rejected a settlement that would have resolved trillions of dollars in claims over the company’s role in the opioid crisis — while at the same time giving Sackler family members broad immunity from future lawsuits.
The existing settlement calls for handing nearly all of Purdue’s assets over to the states, cities and counties that are suing the drugmaker over its handling of the pain killer OxyContin. The deal would provide billions of dollars to anti-addiction programs.
But it would also protect Purdue’s owners from future opioid lawsuits, a dynamic that has drawn the ire of some state attorneys general, politicians and lawyers representing clients making personal-injury claims. Attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia, along with an arm of the U.S. Justice Department, succeeded in having the settlement overturned on appeal after Purdue’s bankruptcy judge approved it last year.
The bankruptcy case is Purdue Pharma LP, 19-23649, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (White Plains).
