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Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma LP yesterday told a bankruptcy judge it hopes to broaden support for a proposed settlement of 2,600 lawsuits alleging it fueled the U.S. opioid crisis, but opponents of the deal highlighted looming legal battles, Reuters reported. A lawyer representing the company told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain that the case was an opportunity to end a “chaotic maelstrom” of litigation. Purdue filed for bankruptcy on Sunday after reaching an outline of a deal with states and local governments that have accused the company of deceptively marketing opioids by overstating benefits and downplaying risks. It has been accused of contributing to a public health crisis that has led to nearly 400,000 overdose deaths between 1999 and 2017, according to the latest U.S. data. The settlement, which Purdue estimates is worth more than $10 billion, would require the Sackler family to cede ownership of Purdue to a trust controlled by the plaintiffs that are suing it. In addition to turning over Purdue, the Sacklers would sell their non-U.S. pharmaceutical businesses and also contribute at least $3 billion of their own money.

The attorney general of Massachusetts gave Purdue Pharma LP a preview of the opposition it’s facing in bankruptcy court as the embattled maker of the OxyContin painkiller seeks approval of a roughly $10 billion settlement stemming from the opioid crisis it helped start, Bloomberg News reported. Maura Healey, who sued Purdue and its board members last year, said yesterday that she’ll soon file an objection in bankruptcy court challenging the proposed settlement with 24 states, five U.S. territories and law firms representing more than 1,000 counties, cities and Native American tribes. Several other states, including New York and California, also slammed the deal. At a press conference Monday in Boston, Healey said that the proposal fails to make Purdue’s billionaire owners, the Sackler family, turn over opioid profits that she says they transferred overseas after “sucking the life out of Purdue.” She also criticized the way Purdue plans to pay for the accord. “This settlement is to be funded by continued and future sales of OxyContin here and abroad — I reject that,” she said. “Every day people in this country are dying as a result of opioids.” Healey has also argued that a proper settlement would include making public millions of pages of documents — including emails, business plans and board minutes — that she says Purdue and the Sacklers have fought for years to keep secret. The current settlement lacks that transparency, she said.

Citing a probe into alleged sexual misconduct by priests, a major credit rating agency is warning it soon may downgrade debt issued by the Archdiocese of Chicago, Crain's Chicago Business reported. Moody’s Investors Service revised to negative its outlook on more than $137 million in unsecured notes issued by the Roman Catholic archdiocese. The firm left intact its core rating of A1 on the debt, but a change in the outlook is a sign of concern and often leads to an actual downgrade later. Moody’s said that the archdiocese, headed by Cardinal Blase Cupich, already has paid out $60 million in misconduct complaints in just the past two years. The archdiocese still has adequate liquidity with $1.05 billion in cash and investments. The Illinois attorney general's office is investigating all six Catholic dioceses in the state and how they have handled complaints of misconduct.

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP yesterday filed for bankruptcy protection, succumbing to pressure from more than 2,600 lawsuits alleging the company helped fuel the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic, Reuters reported. Purdue’s board met yesterday to approve the long-expected bankruptcy filing, which the company is pursuing to restructure under terms of a proposal to settle the widespread litigation. Purdue, which filed for chapter 11 protection in a federal bankruptcy court in White Plains, New York, reached a tentative deal to resolve lawsuits with 24 states and five U.S. territories, as well as lead lawyers for more than 2,000 cities, counties and other plaintiffs, the company said. Two dozen states remain opposed or uncommitted to the proposed settlement, setting the stage for contentious legal battles over who bears responsibility for a public health crisis that has claimed the lives of nearly 400,000 people between 1999 and 2017, according to the latest U.S. data. Opposing states, including Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut, want the Sacklers to guarantee more of their own money will go toward a settlement, and have questioned Purdue’s calculations valuing the overall deal at more than $10 billion. The Sacklers, who would cede control of Purdue in the proposed settlement, have offered $3 billion in cash and an additional $1.5 billion or more through the eventual sale of another company they own, called Mundipharma, according to the company and people familiar with the terms. The Sacklers have declined to revise their offer.

PG&E said it has reached an $11 billion settlement with insurance companies over wildfire claims, a significant step toward emerging from bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The deal covers insurance carriers and hedge funds that were seeking compensation from PG&E for payouts insurers made to homeowners and businesses in connection with fires sparked by the utility’s equipment. It leaves wildfire victims as the only major group of claimants that has not reached a settlement with the San Francisco utility, which is pushing to emerge from bankruptcy next year. The settlement is the second major agreement PG&E has reached with claimants. In June, PG&E agreed to pay $1 billion to local governments and state agencies to settle claims from fires in 2017 and 2018, obtaining their support for the company’s bankruptcy plan. Representatives for wildfire victims criticized the settlement Friday, saying that the company appeared to be trying to isolate those who lost homes and lives to the fires.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester (N.Y.), facing potentially huge judgments for past sexual abuse by its priests and other ministers, filed for bankruptcy yesterday, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported. The diocese filed a petition for chapter 11 reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Rochester at about 9:30 a.m. The petition estimates the diocese's assets as $50 million to $100 million —and its financial liabilities as $100 million to $500 million. Rochester’s diocese becomes the first of New York state’s eight dioceses, and the 20th nationwide, to seek protection from creditors in bankruptcy court because of financial fallout from the Catholic Church’s decades-long child sexual abuse scandal. The intent of the diocese's chapter 11 filing such as this is to reorganize the diocese’s finances, marshal funds to pay fair compensation to sex-abuse accusers and create a plan for the diocese to continue operations much as they were before. In a statement filed in bankruptcy court, Bishop Salvatore Matano confirmed the diocese sought chapter 11 protection "in order to respond to claims stemming from the Child Victims Act in an equitable and comprehensive manner, and to reorganize the financial affairs of the Diocese in order to permit it to continue to fulfill its ministries to the Catholic faithful."

Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of the blockbuster painkiller OxyContin, reached a tentative settlement yesterday with 23 states and more than 2,000 cities and counties that sued the company over its role in the opioid crisis, according to attorneys involved in the deal, the Washington Post reported. The executive committee of lawyers representing cities, counties and other groups in a federal lawsuit against Purdue and other drug companies is recommending the deal be accepted. But more than half the state attorneys general in the nation balked, saying they planned to continue pursuing the company and its owners, the Sackler family. Under terms of a plan negotiated for months, the Sacklers would relinquish control of Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue Pharma and admit no wrongdoing. The company would declare bankruptcy and be resurrected as a trust whose main purpose would be producing medications to combat the opioid epidemic. To date, Purdue has also settled with one state, Oklahoma, for $270 million, and won a victory when a North Dakota judge threw out that state’s case against the company.

PG&E Corp.’s plan to cap payments to victims of California wildfires blamed on the power producer is “totally unacceptable,” a lawyer representing victims in the utility’s bankruptcy case said yesterday, Reuters reported. San Francisco-based PG&E unveiled on Monday a proposed plan to exit bankruptcy that included payments capped at $8.4 billion for wildfire claims. The plan forces fire victims and government entities to seek compensation from the same fund, which will dilute payouts for everyone, said Cecily Dumas, a BakerHostetler lawyer who represents the official committee of tort claimants in PG&E’s bankruptcy. State investigators have blamed PG&E transmission lines with causing wildfires in 2017 and 2018 including the Camp Fire that killed 85 people. Dumas said that government agencies such as the Department of the Interior and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, could have billions of dollars in claims, leaving far less for victims than $8.4 billion. At the same time, PG&E said that it intends to pay other unsecured creditors such as noteholders in full in cash when its plan goes into effect next year. “That’s unfair,” said Dumas.

California power provider PG&E Corp. yesterday unveiled the outlines of a reorganization plan that will pay $17.9 billion for claims stemming from the wildfires that pushed it to seek bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported. The plan filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco includes payments capped at $8.4 billion for wildfire victims, payments capped at $8.5 billion for reimbursing insurers that had paid victims and a $1 billion settlement with local governments. The plan also would pay PG&E’s debts in full and honor the company’s contracts, including ones for buying renewable energy to help California meet its goals for cutting greenhouse emissions. “Under the plan we filed today, we will meet our commitment to fairly compensate wildfire victims and we will emerge from chapter 11 financially sound and able to continue meeting California’s clean energy goals,” PG&E Chief Executive and President Bill Johnson said in a statement. San Francisco-based PG&E sought chapter 11 protection in January. At the time, the company expected more than $30 billion in liabilities from wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018, including November’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire of the state’s modern history. PG&E must file a detailed reorganization plan by Sept. 29, the day its exclusivity period for filing a chapter 11 plan expires. If PG&E resolves its bankruptcy by the end of June 2020, it will be able to participate in a recently enacted, $21 billion state fund to help California’s investor-owned utilities pay for future wildfires liabilities.

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma is expected to file for bankruptcy after settlement talks over the nation's deadly overdose crisis hit an impasse, attorneys general involved in the talks said Saturday, the Associated Press reported. The breakdown puts the first federal trial over the opioid epidemic on track to begin next month, likely without Purdue, and sets the stage for a complex legal drama involving nearly every state and hundreds of local governments. Purdue, the family that owns the company and a group of state attorneys general had been trying for months to find a way to avoid trial and determine Purdue's responsibility for a crisis that has cost 400,000 American lives over the past two decades. An email from the attorneys general of Tennessee and North Carolina, obtained by The Associated Press, said that Purdue and the Sackler family had rejected two offers from the states over how payments under any settlement would be handled and that the family declined to offer counterproposals. "As a result, the negotiations are at an impasse, and we expect Purdue to file for bankruptcy protection imminently," Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein wrote in their message, which was sent to update attorneys general throughout the country on the status of the talks.