Washington: On Thursday, the US Supreme Court ruled against the rich Sackler family’s owners from being sued for their part in the nation’s dangerous opioid epidemic by blocking the US Supreme Court‘s bankruptcy settlement. The 5- 4 decision overturned a lower court’s decision that upheld the plan to pay up to$ 6 billion to live thousands of lawsuits accusing the company of unlawfully misleading marketing of OxyContin, a potent pain treatment that was released in 1996.
Prez Biden’s administration, which had argued the settlement was an abuse of bankruptcy protections intended for financial trouble victims rather than people like the Sacklers, who have n’t filed for bankruptcy, won. The decision was authored by conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas, as well as democratic Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The Sacklers “haven’t filed for bankruptcy and have n’t placed almost all of their property on the table for lenders to receive, but they want what basically amounts to a discharge,” he wrote.
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and other traditional Chief Justice John Roberts joined as co-authors of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion. ” The choice is bad on the rules and devastating for more than 100, 000 narcotic victims and their families”, he said.
In 2019, Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to pay its bills, almost all of which were brought against it by thousands of lawsuits alleging OxyContin contributed to the onset of an opioid epidemic that has resulted in over half a million US overdose deaths over the past 20 years. The problem in the case was whether US bankruptcy laws permits Purdue’s reform to encompass legal protections for Sackler family members who have not yet filed for personal debt. For additional debt agreements involving claims of large injury, the choice has wider repercussions.
