Purdue’s Sacklers Reach $6 Billion Opioid Deal With States
- Settlement follows months of mediation with dissenting states
- Initial bankruptcy plan panned by judge over immunity grants
Bottles of Purdue Pharma L.P. OxyContin medication
Photographer: George Frey/Bloomberg
Members of the billionaire Sackler family that own Purdue Pharma LP agreed to a bigger opioid-painkiller settlement with the handful of states that helped overturn its prior deal, bringing the drugmaker closer to a resolution of all its liabilities over the highly addictive medicines.
The family has struck a deal worth as much as $6 billion with the dissenting states, a court-appointed mediator in Purdue’s bankruptcy case said in a report Thursday. Under the agreement, the states will drop appeals of the previous iteration of Purdue’s plan. In return, the Sacklers have essentially doubled the cash they’ll hand over as part of Purdue’s Chapter 11 filing from an initial $3 billion and apologized for OxyContin’s role in the opioid epidemic.