Judge rules Purdue Pharma workers should get bonuses

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — More time is needed to sort out whether the CEO of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma should receive a $1.3 million bonus next year, but the company should be allowed to pay about $35 million in bonuses to 682 other employees, the judge overseeing the company’s bankruptcy case said Wednesday.

There were objections at the hearing only to payments to CEO Craig Landau and a group of nine other upper-level “insider” employees.

Judge Robert Drain said he would sign an order for all the employees except Landau to get bonuses next year. He said it would contain a provision that it could be withheld from anyone found liable in lawsuits over the toll of the opioid crisis linked to more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000.

Purdue, based in Stamford, Connecticut, is in bankruptcy court as part of an effort to settle more than 2,700 lawsuits it’s facing over the toll of opioids.

Drain said officials with the company and other interested parties should continue to discuss whether it’s appropriate for Landau, who has run the company since 2017, to receive a performance bonus on top of his $2.6 million base salary.

Drain said on the bench that he wasn’t especially moved by the contention from a group of 24 states that Landau should have his pay docked because of a possibility that he could be held liable in the future.

But he said he was concerned when it was revealed at the hearing that the CEO’s base salary was doubled in 2018 shortly after the company hired a law firm to consult on filing for bankruptcy — and that the same year, he received $6 million of the $12 million in retention payments that he had been scheduled to get from 2020 through 2026.