Purdue Pharma LP’s billionaire owners have retracted their request to make public a 580-page internal report — only hours after telling a judge that it would bolster their defense against allegations they helped trigger the U.S. opioid epidemic, Bloomberg News reported. The Sackler family, whose bankrupt company developed the painkiller OxyContin, asked in a Dec. 20 court filing to release a presentation prepared for Purdue creditors outlining its factual and legal defenses. The family argued the report would help rebut unfair allegations that they caused the public-health crisis, a narrative that was undermining Purdue’s $10 billion settlement proposal to end 2,700 lawsuits filed by states and local governments. But hours after filing the request last week with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in New York, the family’s lawyers reversed course and asked to withdraw the motion, without explanation, court records show.
In related news, Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain has a reputation for thorough preparation, deep experience handling big, complicated corporate cases, a sometimes forceful manner from the bench — and a fondness for pop-culture references, some of them of baby boomer vintage, according to an Associated Press profile. It will be up to him to decide whether to approve a potentially $12 billion plan by Purdue Pharma to settle more than 2,700 lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis that has killed 400,000 people in the U.S. over the past two decades. The proceedings are all but certain to be complex and acrimonious: Nearly half of the nation's state attorneys general and many victims have come out against the plan and vowed to press on with their lawsuits, arguing that the deal on the table does not wring enough money from members of the billionaire Sackler family who own the company and does not contain an admission of guilt over one of the gravest public-health crises in U.S. history. Read more.
