Supreme Court to Rule on Purdue Pharma's Settlement Plan

The decision could determine whether the Sackler family, owners of the OxyContin maker, can be shielded from lawsuits through the company's bankruptcy.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on December 4 over whether the agreement, part of the resolution of Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy, violates federal law.
The issue for the justices is whether the legal shield that bankruptcy provides can be extended to people such as the Sacklers, who have not declared bankruptcy themselves.
The agreement, even with billions of dollars set aside for opioid abatement and treatment programs, also poses a moral conundrum that has divided people who lost loved ones or lost years of their own lives to opioids.
Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller that hit the market in 1996, is often cited as a catalyst of a nationwide opioid epidemic.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department responsible for promoting the integrity of the bankruptcy system, has objected to the legal protections for Sackler family members.