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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.

Ryan Salame, the former co-chief executive of FTX Digital Markets, is in negotiations with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to criminal charges following the implosion of the cryptocurrency exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The Republican megadonor may enter a plea as soon as next month to offenses including campaign finance law violations, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions aren’t public. It is unclear whether he will enter into a cooperation agreement with prosecutors and testify against FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Salame’s former colleagues, Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, have already pleaded guilty to playing a role in the alleged multibillion dollar fraud at the now-bankrupt crypto empire and will be key witnesses in the government’s case against Bankman-Fried.

Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the U.S. Department of Justice's request to delay its multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy settlement resolving thousands of lawsuits against it over the opioid epidemic, Reuters reported.The department's bankruptcy watchdog last week asked the Supreme Court to pause the settlement, which would shield the company's Sackler family owners from opioid lawsuits in exchange for a $6 billion contribution to a broader settlement with states, local governments and victims of addiction. The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the high court to put the deal on hold after a federal appeals court rejected a proposed delay. Purdue on Friday argued that a delay would be destructive, imperiling a settlement that has the support of all major stakeholders, including state attorneys general and people affected by the opioid crisis. The DOJ's position would "take billions of dollars out of opioid abatement programs that are sorely needed" and potentially "deprive victims of any meaningful recovery" if the deal falls apart, Purdue's lawyers wrote. That position was echoed by a group representing 60,000 people who have filed personal injury opioid claims in Purdue's bankruptcy.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco will "very likely" file for bankruptcy in order to deal with a wave of lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by its priests and other employees and volunteers going back decades, the archbishop said, according to a Los Angeles Times report. In an open letter on Friday, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone said the option was the result of "much contemplation and prayer" and arose from discussions with lawyers and financial advisors. More than 500 civil lawsuits alleging abuse were filed against the Catholic archdiocese between 2020 and 2022, when California temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on such allegations against churches and other institutions. Cordileone said that filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy would allow the archdiocese "to deal with the hundreds of cases collectively rather than one at a time" and "reorganize its financial affairs to continue its vital ministries to the faithful and to the communities that rely on our services and charity." The archdiocese would not be the first in California to take such action. Bankruptcy has been filed or mulled by dioceses across the state, including in Oakland, Santa Rosa, Sacramento and San Diego.

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former chief of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, must face a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James accusing him of civil fraud, a Manhattan state court judge ruled on Friday, Reuters reported. Justice Margaret Chan said the attorney general sufficiently alleged that Mashinsky defrauded investors by touting Celsius as a safe alternative to banks and concealing its risks, including hundreds of millions of dollars of investment losses. Judge Chan also said James could pursue some claims under the Martin Act, a powerful state securities law, and that the "earned interest accounts" that Celsius offered customers qualified as securities under state law. The attorney general's lawsuit "supports a reasonable inference that the harm suffered by investors flowed, at least in part, from Mashinsky's alleged misrepresentations made in New York concerning Celsius' overall financial health and investment safety," Chan wrote in a 25-page decision.

FTX Dubai, which was created just months before the global crypto exchange collapsed last November, is asking to be exempt from U.S. bankruptcy proceedings, TheStreet.com reported. “FTX Dubai is balance-sheet solvent. Therefore, the debtors believe that a solvent voluntary liquidation procedure in accordance with the laws of the United Arab Emirates would allow a timely distribution of the positive cash balance after payment of all outstanding liabilities and liquidation of all assets," court documents said. Although the parent company went into bankruptcy proceedings in November, its decision to wrap up 102 affiliated entities scattered across the world in its proceedings has caused problems. FTX Dubai, for example, was owned by FTX's Europe arm. Now, FTX Dubai is claiming it was not engaged in business before the FTX collapse and has "no reasonable likelihood of rehabilitating its operations." It only wanted the ability to pay employee wages and benefits. The issue is pending a hearing at the end of the month.

Johnson & Johnson and a committee of cancer victims have agreed to speed up a court appeal of their fight regarding whether the health-care giant can use bankruptcy to end as many as 100,000 talc-related claims, Bloomberg News reported. The move could cut months off the appeals process. The first time the two sides fought about the issue, it took about a year and resulted in the bankruptcy case being dismissed. Now, J&J intends to appeal a decision by US Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan to throw out the insolvency case of LTL Management, the unit the company created in order to try to resolve tens of thousands of cancer lawsuits. With Judge Kaplan gearing up to likely sign a final order dismissing the bankruptcy case next week — for the second time — both J&J and the committee of cancer victims want the federal appeals court to take up the matter. The cancer lawsuits have been on hold since J&J put LTL into bankruptcy for the first time in 2021. After that case was dismissed, J&J struck a deal with tens of thousands of claimants and put LTL back into bankruptcy, only to have that case struck down as well.

A bankrupt Holiday Inn in downtown Manhattan can’t use chapter 11 to maintain its low-rate mortgage without paying penalty interest linked to its default, a judge ruled in a setback for borrowers seeking to hold on to more affordable loans as interest rates rise, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Philip Bentley of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan said in this week’s ruling that Golden Seahorse, owner of the 50-story hotel, should pay the default interest and fees charged by its lenders, totaling about $20 million, if it wants to keep its cheaper mortgage as it leaves chapter 11. The judge, however, said that Golden Seahorse can return to his court to argue that its defaults should be excused because under New York state law, the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to keep up with its payments. A lawyer for Golden Seahorse, Scott Markowitz, said the company would do so. Golden Seahorse arranged a 10-year, $137 million loan in 2018 and had been current until May 2020, when it failed to make a payment after the hotel closed because of the pandemic. Its lenders began charging default interest and Golden Seahorse filed for bankruptcy in November to avoid a seizure.