A permanent fix is needed for Sackler opioid deal

While the U.S. Supreme Court is sharply divided along ideological lines, it might surprise many Americans to learn that unanimous rulings happen every term, even in cases where lower courts have reached opposing conclusions.

We see a good chance of the high court coming together for a 9-0 vote in the months ahead to shoot down a terrible injustice that festered in bankruptcy courts for years — until the notorious Sackler family inadvertently put a spotlight on it.

The Sacklers made billions engineering an opioid epidemic that ruined countless lives and killed off Americans by the hundreds of thousands.

Their company, Purdue Pharma, admitted that it used false marketing to con doctors into prescribing its deadly pills by lying about how addictive they were. As regulators dithered, the Sacklers conducted what one family member called a “milking” operation, stripping the company of more than $10 billion and stashing the dirty money offshore.

Purdue’s bankruptcy made the scandal even more outrageous.

The Sacklers agreed to put up $6 billion — a fraction of what they had creamed off the opioid epidemic — in exchange for blanket protection from all related legal claims. Though no one in the family had filed for personal bankruptcy, the settlement in bankruptcy court would have enabled the whole gang to walk off with billions and no worries about being held accountable in other courts.

It’s a shame that many bankruptcy judges have given up trying to do justice, choosing expediency instead, and inventing rules for these releases that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Earlier this month, the high court temporarily blocked the nationwide settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, agreeing to a White House request to put the brakes on the agreement. The court also agreed to hear arguments in December focused on whether the bankruptcy code authorizes a court to extinguish “claims held by non-debtors against nondebtor third parties, without the claimants’ consent.”

So far, the high court hasn’t tipped its hand about how it will resolve the matter. What if the court rules 9-0 that the bankruptcy code doesn’t authorize those releases?

Congress will need to start doing the job it should have been doing all along, updating the law so that bankrupt companies can find a temporary shelter to liquidate or reorganize, while resolving relevant litigation without the corrupting influence of the releases.

At the same time, Congress also needs to ensure that bad actors can’t get away with stashing a fortune overseas while using every legal trick in the book to write another sickening chapter in the opioid epidemic.

Justice for the victims demands it.