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The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany on Wednesday proposed mediated financial settlements for survivors of clergy sex abuse as an alternative to court battles or the diocese declaring bankruptcy, the Albany Daily Gazette reported. The diocese is facing a potentially huge cost from the more than 400 claims pending against it in court, both in legal bills and judgments. In an open letter, it said mediation would result in a more equitable distribution of the finite pot of funds it has available for the purpose. But a law firm representing two dozen people who claim to have been molested by Albany Diocese clergy decades ago called it a bogus and cynical maneuver to avoid transparency and accountability. Three years ago in New York, the long-running clergy pedophilia scandal took a sharp turn from a shocking revelation about one of society’s most respected institutions to a major financial threat: The state Child Victims Act briefly allowed civil lawsuits for decades-old incidents that had been — and once again are — far beyond the normal statute of limitations for a civil lawsuit. Four of New York State’s eight Catholic dioceses — Buffalo, Rochester, Rockville Center and Syracuse — subsequently filed for bankruptcy under the financial weight of potential legal settlements or trial verdicts.

Endo International Plc, the latest drugmaker impaired by opioid lawsuits, must decide whether to skip more than $90 million in interest payments as it contemplates a potential bankruptcy filing, Bloomberg News reported. The company has been discussing its options with creditor groups that have conflicting views over its best path for dealing with lawsuits over its role in America’s opioid epidemic, a mounting debt load and a dimmed outlook for its bestselling drug. The company’s senior lenders have advocated for a bankruptcy filing and want the company to skip upcoming interest payments to preserve cash, according to people with knowledge of the talks. Endo’s lower-ranking creditors — the ones that would collect the bulk of interest due Thursday and at the end of July, are pressing options that would allow the drugmaker to restructure outside of court. Endo has a payment due on June 30 to holders of 6% bonds maturing in 2028. At the end of July the company is scheduled to pay $55 million more in interest to various other creditors, according to data collected by Bloomberg. Senior lenders have argued the advantages of skipping the interest payments and filing for bankruptcy. Endo and the lenders have been trading proposals as they try to come to a deal. The 6% unsecured notes due 2028 traded at 6 cents on the dollar Wednesday, according to Trace data. Meanwhile, the 5.875% first-lien bonds due 2024 changed hands at approximately 76 cents on the dollar.

In patches of rural Appalachia and the Rust Belt, the health authorities were sounding alarms that a powerful painkiller called Opana had become the drug of choice among people abusing prescription pills, the New York Times reported. It was twice as potent as OxyContin, the painkiller widely blamed for sparking the opioid crisis, and was relatively easy to dissolve and inject. By 2015, government investigations and scientific publications had linked its misuse to clusters of disease, including a rare and life-threatening blood disorder and an H.I.V. outbreak in Indiana. Opana’s manufacturer, the pharmaceutical company Endo, had scaled back promotion of the drug. But months later, the company abruptly changed course, refocusing resources on the drug by assigning more sales representatives. The push was known internally as the Sales Force Blitz — and it was conducted with consultants at McKinsey & Company, who had been hired by Endo to provide marketing advice about its chronic-pain medicines and other products. A campaign by McKinsey and Endo to push the company's chronic-pain products, including Opana. The untold story of McKinsey’s work for Endo was among the revelations found by The New York Times in a repository of more than 100,000 documents obtained by a coalition of state attorneys general in a legal settlement related to McKinsey’s opioid work. Much has been disclosed over the years about McKinsey’s relationship with Purdue Pharma, including the consulting firm’s recommendation that the drug maker “turbocharge” its sales of OxyContin. But The Times found that the firm played a far deeper and broader role in advising clients involved in the opioid crisis than was publicly disclosed. The newly released McKinsey records include more than 15 years of emails, slide presentations, spreadsheets, proposals and other documents. They provide a sweeping and detailed depiction of a firm that became a trusted adviser to companies at the core of an epidemic that has claimed half a million American lives.

Oklahoma has reached a $250 million settlement with AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp to resolve allegations the drug distributors contributed to the opioid epidemic in the state, Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor said on Monday, Reuters reported. O'Connor said Oklahoma recovered more money from the distributors than the state would have received if it had joined a nationwide $26 billion settlement that was announced last year. The national settlement also includes Johnson & Johnson. Oklahoma sued J&J separately, but in November the case was thrown out on appeal, negating a $465 million trial judgment and undermining Oklahoma's legal theories in its opioid litigation. AmerisourceBergen said drug distributors have been forced to "walk a legal and ethical tightrope" without clearer regulatory guidance on how to protect consumers from legal but potentially dangerous drugs.

Endo International PLC junior bondholders have formed a group to press the drugmaker not to file for bankruptcy as it faces opioid-related lawsuits and a drop in earnings, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The group of institutional investors said on Monday that it has proposed several out-of-court transactions, including a bond swap, that would enable Endo to continue operating its business and investing in new drugs. The bondholder group, which is advised by law firm White & Case LLP and financial adviser GLC Advisors & Co. LLC, said that “a near-term bankruptcy filing is unnecessary” due to the company’s strong liquidity and free cash flow generation. As of March 31, Endo had cash on hand of more than $1.4 billion and $640 million of availability under its revolving credit line. There are no significant debt maturities until October 2024, the group said. Endo, has more than $8 billion in debt, of which about $1.3 billion are unsecured, or junior, bonds. The company has recently started talks with a separate group of lenders and senior bondholders about a potential restructuring. One of Endo’s most pressing challenges is litigation alleging it helped fuel the opioid addiction epidemic. While the company has reached settlements with a handful of state and local governments over opioid liabilities, there are still thousands more outstanding lawsuits it hasn’t yet resolved. The company has been warning of the risk of a bankruptcy filing in its regulatory disclosures since last year.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe's most iconic building will be mortgaged to help cover settlements to clergy sexual abuse victims, Archbishop John C. Wester said in a recent letter to parishes, the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal reported. The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, known as the "mother church" of the archdiocese, and any other properties that are mortgaged will not be lost because parishes will chip in to cover the payments on the debt, Wester said in his June 17 letter. Parishes will collectively need to borrow up to $12 million to cover the gap in the archdiocese's $75 million share of the bankruptcy settlement, according to the letter. The archdiocese is asking each parish to take on a portion of that debt. Representatives for clergy sex abuse survivors and the archdiocese announced in mid-May that they'd agreed to a $121.5 million fund to compensate hundreds of people who say they suffered childhood sexual abuse by priests and other clergy dating back to the 1990s. Wester said that the archdiocese is working to secure financing from two Catholic lenders — the Catholic Order of Foresters and the Notre Dame Federal Credit Union. The archdiocese must pay $65 million by the end of September, and the remaining $10 million by the end of next March.

A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday put on hold the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on sales of Juul Labs Inc.’s e-cigarettes, after the company appealed the health agency’s order and said the ban would cause it “irreparable harm,” Reuters reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Of Columbia Circuit said the purpose of the stay was to allow the court sufficient time to consider Juul’s briefing for an emergency review and not a ruling on the merits of that motion. The once red-hot vape company has also been working with its legal advisers on options that include a possible bankruptcy filing if it is unable to get relief from the government’s ban, the Wall Street Journal reported. Juul’s counsel Kirkland & Ellis is advising on the contingency plans, according to the report. The FDA said on Thursday that Juul failed to show the sale of its products would be appropriate for public health, following a nearly two-year-long review of data provided by the company. Juul, partly owned by tobacco giant Altria Group Inc, said it disagreed with the agency’s findings. The temporary freeze on the FDA order lasts at least until July 12, according to the court’s scheduling order.

A bankruptcy judge sent the former parent companies of Maxus Energy Corp. to trial over creditor allegations that they stripped the now-defunct subsidiary of assets and should pay as much as $14 billion for its obligation to clean up New Jersey’s Passaic River, the Wall Street Journal reported. Judge Christopher Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., declined to grant pretrial judgment in litigation alleging Argentina’s YPF SA and Spain’s Repsol SA hollowed out Maxus to extract its value, while leaving its environmental debts unpaid when it filed for chapter 11 protection in 2016. A spokesperson for YPF declined to comment. The companies have denied the allegations. A Repsol representative said the judge’s decision “leaves open the question of Repsol’s liability and damages, if any, which are now the subject of a trial. Repsol intends to continue defending against the claims and believes it will be vindicated.” The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Maxus creditors after its bankruptcy, concerns a manufacturing site on the Passaic River where a corporate predecessor made herbicides and pesticides decades ago, including the defoliant Agent Orange. YPF, an Argentine oil giant, bought Maxus in 1995 to gain a foothold in U.S. oil-and-gas exploration and only later came to understand the extent of its environmental liabilities at the Newark, N.J., site, according to Wednesday’s ruling.

The company and its affiliates built over 1,100 rowhouses in Philly and planned major developments on the city’s waterfront, as well as in northern New Jersey, New York City, and Palm Beach, Fla., the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. In a national advertising blitz, it promised investors big-bucks returns of 12% — perhaps better than 20%. But on Tuesday, New Jersey issued a “cease and desist” order against the Secaucus-based National Realty Investment Advisors alleging they “fraudulently” sold $630 million worth of securities in the last four years to “at least” 1,800 investors nationwide. The state Bureau of Securities found that rather than relying on cash-flow proceeds, company officers used investors’ money to pay off other investors and diverted “millions of investor dollars to make lavish payments to family members,” the state Attorney General’s Office said. That included pay for a no-work job for the wife of portfolio manager Thomas N. Salzano, who last year was criminally charged with fraud by federal authorities. Officers hired “family-owned or controlled companies,” New Jersey officials said, among them a construction company in which Salzano’s son was chief financial officer. While NRIA and its entities haven’t been charged criminally, they have been under investigation by federal agencies and officials in three states. The 63-page order itemized what the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office called “unlawful conduct,” mandating that the company “cease and desist” engaging in it. It was unclear whether NRIA, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, plans to appeal the order. The order prohibits NRIA “from engaging in the conduct described in the order itself, or from further securities law violations,” and publicizes the alleged fraud, the state Attorney General’s Office said. It was unclear how the order would be enforced.