A court-appointed mediator will soon shed fresh light on the status of talks between members of the Sackler family and states opposing Purdue Pharma LP’s sweeping opioid settlement, Bloomberg News reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, who is overseeing the talks, will file a report no later than Friday providing her outlook on the mediation, a lawyer for Purdue said during a virtual court hearing Thursday. In two recent reports, Chapman said the Sacklers and states were making substantial progress toward a larger settlement. The court-ordered mediation was scheduled to expire yesterday. Judge Chapman might request additional time for talks, Purdue’s lawyer, Marshall Huebner, said in the hearing Thursday. Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue are said to have mulled adding an additional $1 billion to the existing settlement proposal, which would bring their total contribution to more than $5 billion, Bloomberg previously reported. In exchange, the handful of states that succeeding in overturning the current proposal on appeal would drop their opposition to the deal.
