Members of the billionaire Sackler family that own Purdue Pharma LP are “even closer” to a deal that would increase their contribution to the OxyContin maker’s embattled opioid settlement, a court-appointed mediator said in a report yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. The family and a handful of state attorneys general who have been fighting Purdue’s opioid settlement are closing in on a deal that would provide new money on top of the $4.325 billion the company’s owners already pledged as well as “certain material non-economic terms,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, who is overseeing the talks, said in her report. Judge Chapman asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who is overseeing Purdue’s bankruptcy, to extend the mediation to February 16. Purdue’s settlement would let the company resolve trillions of dollars in claims against it over its role in the opioid crisis. The accord calls for handing nearly all of the drugmaker’s assets over to the states, cities and counties suing it for its handling of OxyContin and would provide billions of dollars to anti-addiction programs. But it would also protect Purdue’s owners from future opioid lawsuits, a dynamic that has drawn the ire of some state attorneys general, politicians and personal injury victims. Attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia, along with an arm of the U.S. Justice Department, succeeded in overturning the settlement on appeal after Purdue’s bankruptcy judge approved it last year.
