Tennessee stands to gain from Purdue Pharma settlement
Tennessee is poised to get a slice of a $4.5 billion settlement if a deal is approved next month in opioid maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy case.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III declined immediate comment on the announcement Thursday that a new settlement deal has been approved by all but nine states seeking to hold Purdue and its owners — the mega-rich Sackler families of Connecticut — financially responsible for the death and addiction its opioids caused.
But court records reviewed by the Knoxville News Sentinel showed Tennessee is not among those nine states that are opposing the deal.
Slatery, records show, has been working with other states’ attorneys general to reach settlements in related national opioid litigation and is believed to have played a role in the Purdue settlement plan.
Spokeswoman Samantha Fisher said Slatery does not want to comment on the settlement — or its impact on Tennesseans — until the plan is finalized.
It’s not clear if the settlement includes specific figures on how much each suing state would receive or how that decision would even be made. A hearing has been set for August for legal approval of the deal.
If Tennessee announces its approval of the deal, a lawsuit that Slatery’s office filed against Purdue Pharma in Knox County Circuit Court in 2018 would be dismissed.
$4.5 BILLION PLAN
The settlement plan aims to resolve some 3,000 lawsuits brought by U.S. communities alleging Purdue and its family owners contributed to an opioid crisis that has claimed the lives of roughly 500,000 people since 1999, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It replaces a plan announced earlier this year that nearly half of the country’s states rejected as too generous to the Sacklers and the company.
The new deal, made public in court records, was reached after Sackler family members agreed to pay another $50 million toward a proposed litigation settlement and to release tens of millions of additional internal documents for public inspection.
Another $175 million would come from relinquishing control of family charitable institutions. The Sackler family members have also agreed to give up naming rights associated with charitable contributions until litigation settlement funds are fully paid, the documents said.
Under the proposed plan, the Sackler families have agreed to pay a settlement of $4.5 billion.
The new plan has now drawn support from attorneys general in 41 states, records show.
Under the plan, Purdue would be dissolved, and the Sackler families will have no involvement in the firm and will be barred from “future active participation” in the opioid business.
In return, Purdue and the Sackler families will be shielded from future litigation. A bankruptcy judge had already called a halt to the thousands of lawsuits now pending against the firm and its owners after Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019.
Purdue in November separately pleaded guilty to three felonies arising from its marketing of prescription opioid painkillers, part of a separate settlement eclipsing $8 billion to resolve U.S. Justice Department criminal and civil investigations.
Sackler family members have not been criminally charged.
TENNESSEE LAWSUIT
Slatery’s office was among the first to use Purdue Pharma’s internal records to publicly reveal the maker of Oxycontin, a widely abused quick-release version of the opioid, had intentionally set out to profiteer from the addictive properties of its drug.
The lawsuit and a News Sentinel investigation into its claims revealed:
› Purdue’s sales force made more than 100 calls to Tennessee doctors every day for years, even after the firm — in 2007 — promised the state it would stop pushing opioids.
› Purdue leaders lied to the medical community, politicians and the public about the dangers of long-term opioid use and created a false narrative that long-term use didn’t create addicts but instead caused “pseudo addictive” symptoms.
› The firm created fake advocacy groups, some of which specifically targeted the elderly and veterans, and used them to convince the public they had a right to opioids.
› The firm created fake literature, hired doctors to pose as experts and infiltrated the Food and Drug Administration’s rule-making process to ensure regulations would not be tightened.
It was not immediately clear what effect the settlement may have in lawsuits filed against Purdue by Tennessee prosecutors using a state law that allows victims of drug dealing to sue their dealers. It is the only such litigation of its kind in the nation.