Sackler Family Empire Poised to Win Immunity from Opioid Lawsuits

That the Sackler Family Empire is able to negotiate its way around the Law is damn disgusting and unacceptable.<p>The fact that the privileged, powerful and rich are able to &#x27;negotiate&#x27; the law in this way is symptomatic of our sick democracies. It&#x27;s little wonder that so many people no longer have faith in their governance or trust their public institutions.<p>I just hope sense prevails and this potential win doesn&#x27;t come to pass.

&gt;&quot;The Sacklers are paying $4.275 billion, and they very much plan and expect to be done with this chapter,&quot; said Marshall Huebner, an attorney representing Purdue Pharma, during a hearing last week.<p>Did they <i>make</i> more than 4.3 billion from the opioid crisis? If so, then this result is a fucking joke and an insult to those who died.

On page 9 of the embedded PDF document (18 of 498 according to the interval counter) you can see the &quot;points&quot; that will be converted to dollars for people adversely affected by Purdue Opioids. What good will cash do at this point? A good rehab facility will cost probably 5-6x more the payout for someone who was deemed addicted; I&#x27;d rather see justice served. I don&#x27;t see a tinge of remorse in this highfalutin document exonerating the guilty of their transgressions. All I see is desperation to get a slice of this settlement, funds that will quickly be burned up, and not even a slap on the wrist for those who took from us some of the best of our generation.

I heard story this on NPR this morning. I was pretty stunned individuals and families can piggy back on a corporate bankruptcy like this. At the very least, I figured maybe there would be some kind of protection and limitations in the Federal courts, but that future claims in state courts would still be able to proceed.<p>But this sounds like it would be complete and total shield for the family members and their assets, a shield that would work against all future lawsuits brought by those which are not a part of this particular bankruptcy proceeding.

This was the same family who laughed at the opioid crisis they caused and called addicts “pillbillies.”