The Sackler Family Wins Immunity from Future Opioid Lawsuits

I&#x27;m not sure we can say at what point the rule of law was abandoned for aristocracy in the US but this is absolute proof that it has happened. The Sackler family is conclusively and directly responsible for at least 18,000 deaths in the united states and instead of complete seizure of their entire assets and life in prison we let them keep 70% of their fortune and give them a &quot;do better next time pat on the head&quot;.<p>I don&#x27;t want to hear that the cases weren&#x27;t strong enough blah blah. In the next room we just extradited a guy from the UK for copying bits. There is no longer rule of law, if there was the will there would be flash bangs and some parallel construction that could easily accomplish whatever level of justice was desired.

&gt; NPR reported on Tuesday that Purdue Pharma and its attorneys launched a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign aimed at convincing the DOJ not to challenge the plan in court.<p>&gt; NPR acquired an early draft of a letter distributed by the drug company to groups supportive of the bankruptcy deal.<p>&gt; The letter is framed as a direct appeal to DOJ officials and purports to be written by those injured by the company and members of the Sackler family.<p>&gt; &quot;We collectively speak for the overwhelming majority of the state and local governments, organizations, and individuals harmed by Purdue and the Sacklers,&quot; the letter states.<p>&gt; There is no mention in the document of the company&#x27;s role launching the effort or crafting the message.<p>Not shocking that the group largely responsible for the opioid crisis would lie like this, but still disgusting. I&#x27;m hoping the DOJ appeals.

&quot;The Sacklers, who admit no wrongdoing and who by their own reckoning earned more than $10 billion from opioid sales, will remain one of the wealthiest families in the world.&quot;

These days I pretty much just assume every single billionaire deserves to get stood up against a wall for the things they did to become one. I&#x27;ve seen very little evidence to the contrary. Even the best of them fall into the &quot;probably worth having around even if they are a raging jackass&quot; category.

If you ever wondered how you could kill half a million people and get away with it, here you go.

I imagine these are the sort of tactics that worked right up until the end of the Ancien Régime. Then suddenly, they didn&#x27;t... and things rapidly devolved.<p>FDR managed to stop his fellow class members from pushing too far, and got the New Deal passed. Now that is unwound, and the tipping point is far too near, again.

Not even certain what to say.<p>Yes this is a low value comment but I&#x27;m speechless. The argument &quot;We potentially screwed up so much that there would be so many people suing us that it would cause legal chaos. So as a result we should be granted full waivers of liability to avoid the lawsuits.&quot; Is so brazen as to be absurd.<p>But the fact it was a successful argument and won is what&#x27;s astounding.<p>Unchecked corporate power is a phenomenal national liability.

&gt; In return, they have agreed to pay roughly $4.3 billion. ... by their own reckoning earned more than $10 billion from opioid sales<p>Who says crime doesn&#x27;t pay? Kill 100s of 1000s of people, destroy millions of lives, and walk away with a cool 6 Billion dollars.. what&#x27;s not to like?<p>When the Law fails to be just, no wonder Vigilantes step in.

&gt; [DELETE THIS SENTENCE] One remaining question for the settlement is whether the Justice Department will file an appeal.<p>Is this article a draft that somehow got published before it was ready?

“Too big to fail” really need ma to be abolished. Wealthy insiders can hide behind large corporations and always issue the thread that jobs will be lost if somebody goes after them.<p>The bailouts of 2008 did enormous damage to people’s trust in justice, so do the constantly too low fines for corporate wrongdoing. The Sackler settlement is just another step in the erosion of trust.<p>No wonder people are clamoring for populist strongmen who will “drain the swamp”.

Clearly, if you want to be a drug dealer, the best way to get into the drug business is to be a white American. See also: Warren Delano Jr. (grandfather of FDR) and Frances Forbes (grandfather of John Kerry), who made their fortunes smuggling opiates into China.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.house.gov&#x2F;representatives&#x2F;find-your-representative" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.house.gov&#x2F;representatives&#x2F;find-your-representati...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.senate.gov&#x2F;senators&#x2F;senators-contact.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.senate.gov&#x2F;senators&#x2F;senators-contact.htm</a><p>If you disagree share your opinion. Best place to do that is too your representative.

The notion that billionaire criminals can be allowed hide from prosecution behind a bankruptcy court judge when they are not bankrupt is just a mind blowing departure from the rule of law.

This is disgusting. Basically outright admitting that there are a class of people who are above the law. I wish i were surprised.<p>Knowingly peddle highly addictive substances, lie about their nature, kill millions, destroy countless lives, and get to keep billions of dollars. it is just hard to fathom.<p>America will be suffering the consequences of these actions for a generation.

How is it even legal to get blanket immunity from civil lawsuits? Isn&#x27;t that a violation of potential plaintiffs&#x27; 7th amendment right to a jury trial in civil cases.

An argument from 2008 was that as the CEOs and bankers were careful, no one had actually broken any laws and so no one (important) went to jail.<p>I agreed with the Bank Of England governer that this presented a huge moral hazard.<p>A similar moral hazard is seen here. Maybe no laws were broken. But the moral hazard argument suggests laws similar to those that targeted Robber barons (ie tax on those with incomes over 5 billion dollars)

What pisses me off most is they have 10 <i>years</i> to pay off what I consider a puny settlement. I would guess their investments appreciation over that time frame could be even more than what they end up paying out. Especially if they go forward with their India misadventure.

Honest question. We&#x27;re knocking over a lot of drug laws: MJ, mushrooms... I&#x27;m assuming there&#x27;s a group that&#x27;s pushing for legalization of everything under the sun. I mean, is there something in Opiods that is like 10 times worse or something?

How is this justice?

Relevant article from last year:<p>These WhatsApp Messages Show the Opioid Crisis Was Just a Big PR Headache for the Sackler Family <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.motherjones.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;these-whatsapp-messages-show-the-opioid-crisis-was-just-a-big-pr-headache-for-the-sackler-family&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.motherjones.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;these-whatsapp-...</a>

Pretty standard and it was done with tobacco companies.<p>The goal is to reach a final resolution. You’d have to be <i>out of your mind</i> to enter into any such agreement if it left you open to future risk of liability.<p>Would you agree to a plea bargain if the DA said “ok, you agree to a 1 year jail term and if we decide to prosecute you in the future for another related crime, well tough”.

500,000 people at the least who are known to have overdosed and died from opioids between 1999 and 2019 and this family gets away with paying just $4.5 Billion from their personal wealth for immunity from all civil pursuits in the Justice System?<p>Forget fair, how is this even legal? Why have we not seen criminal charges levied?

i still dont really understand what they are accused of. did they lie about something in the trials or something?

At what point does this cross the line from &quot;selling a legal product&quot; to &quot;mass murder&quot;?

So what did we learn today?<p>You can build a massive fortune by:<p>1) creating addictive painkillers 2) push the company to promote the drug to sales reps 3) cause an epidemic responsible for killing 50,000 Americans 4) blame it on the company 6) get granted immunity from the problem you created if you decide to donate a fraction of your fortune (John Oliver explained how the spackler family can donate periodically based on surplus from investments)<p>At the same time I think this is unbelievable but I&#x27;m also not surprised.

There are hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions of BIPOC individuals out there in the USA who have felonies on their record and ruined lives for <i>selling marijuana</i>, or other trivial low level personal-usage-amount drug crimes, and these guys get to walk?

Seems odd how we spent billions locking up low level offenders - and high-level traffickers and dealers - but basically let them slide with 4.5B and forfeiting ownership.<p>Also the opioid epidemic has done way more damage to this nation than what a few billion can fix.

The sacklers manufactured a legal product that sold (legally) via perscription only. If anybody should be sued it is the individual doctors who made millions operating pill mills.<p>Meanwhile real patients suffering from chronic pain now have more difficult access to effective treatments due to the moral panic.<p>How about some individual responsibility? If you choose to misuse your pain medication so that you develop addiction and then go further and transfer to using street drugs and overdose on heroin cut with fentanyl then it is your own fault.<p>Though I will note the transfer to street drugs is often impelled by the above mentioned moral panic restricting supply.<p>I say this as somebody who had a family member die of an &quot;heroin&quot; (who knows what&#x27;s in it) overdose after starting with perscribed painkillers.

If you haven’t, I urge you to watch The Crime Of The Century on HBO. The title is not hyperbolic, and this outcome speaks to just how unequal justice is for the wealthy.

This is a gross miscarriage of justice.<p>&quot;The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.&quot; – Frank Wilhoit

Valium, Opioids ... oh well, see you on the next one.

Well, the Sacklers get off free. I was hoping that something like actual justice would come of this, but I guess I was hoping for too much.

I get that they get to keep most of their money, but how come nobody&#x27;s going to jail for this?

There&#x27;s an alarming legal trend with big pharma that they are blameless, not unlike the way big tech hides behind Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act when it&#x27;s convenient to them for profit but also exploit their censorship and free speech meddling power unchecked.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;16&#x2F;covid-vaccine-side-effects-compensation-lawsuit.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;16&#x2F;covid-vaccine-side-effects-c...</a><p>This is not healthy on so many levels. We urgently need credible politicians who are by, of and for the people instead of the career lobbyist controlled bureaucrats currently in power in the western world

After all this, you sometimes do wonder that the guys with the guillotines did have a point

For anyone that&#x27;s just getting up to speed on this, John Oliver had a really good video specifically about this issue: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uaCaIhfETsM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uaCaIhfETsM</a>

I&#x27;ve got a settlement for them, and it only cost about $.70 a head. I swear they&#x27;ll be immune from future legal action.

But Big Pharma and the FDA (which approved these opioids) are totally trustworthy, folks. Don&#x27;t you dare ask any questions, or you&#x27;ll be banned from Facebook.

Its easy to criticize the Sackler settlement, but I have yet to hear anyone criticize the US Government that received nearly $4bln in taxes (profit) from the $10Bln their enterprise earned.<p>How come the US Govt&#x27;s $4bln &quot;take&quot; is not considered ill-gotten gain, particularly given it was the US FDA (Woodcock, in her prior role at agency) that essentially sanctioned rampant opioid prescriptions?

This is being framed is as miscarriage of justice, and from a moral perspective it definitely is. The problem is that the legal grounds on which Purdue (and the Sacklers) can be sued are actually kind of weak.<p>Broadly, the things Purdue is accused of are 1) Aggressively marketing opioids to doctors, and 2) Lobbying the states to change various laws around prescription and marketing of opioids<p>The problem is that for direct liability, there are two more actors that need to be considered - the doctors, and the patients themselves. Doctors are considered to be experts, and patients are often breaking the law when they misuse opioids. Both of these facts break the chain of liability, and so arguing that Purdue is legally liable for the ultimate addiction of the patient is difficult.<p>As a result, people have tried to sue Purdue under more general &quot;public nuisance&quot; statutes, rather than regular tort liability. A public nuisance is when someone interferes with a right that the general public shares in common. However, this area of law is not very well developed - a lot of it is carryover from old British law, and winning those cases isn&#x27;t a slam dunk. So there are certain objectors to the settlement, but I don&#x27;t know why people think that it would be easy to hold the Sacklers criminally responsible or to get more money than this settlement.