Opioid overdose victims say the stringent documentation requirements effectively lock them out of making claims against Purdue, especially if their loved ones died a number of years ago, Bloomberg News reported. Some states require pharmacy records to be destroyed after a certain period of time for privacy reasons. Relatives face even more barriers in obtaining records of someone who died. Those who acquired opioids illegally wouldn’t generate any pharmacy paperwork at all. And physicians are only required to hold medical records for a certain number of years, varying by state. Taylor Wall of Andrews & Thornton, an attorney representing opioid victims in the Purdue bankruptcy, said Purdue’s trust distribution procedures are more complicated than those of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, a generic drug company that filed for bankruptcy in 2020, though they impose similar qualifications on proving the use of a qualified opioid. “The height of the opioid epidemic was at least somewhere between 2000 to 2010, depending on what state you may have lived in where the opioid epidemic really rose, so that makes obtaining records for a lot of individuals very difficult,” Wall said. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 564,000 people died from opioid overdoses since 1999, including prescription and illicit opioids. Around 135,000 individuals filed personal injury claims against Purdue for their loss of loved ones and opioid addiction treatment expenses by the July 2020 deadline. People who had access to information necessary to fill out a claim weren’t initially required to submit medical records, said Cynthia Munger, a member of the Purdue Bankruptcy Ad Hoc Committee that sought to hold Purdue accountable during the bankrputcy on Accountability. During the early stages of the bankruptcy process, the notion of potential rejection due to lack of prescription proof was “not properly articulated up front, and later buried in pages of legalese,” she added.
