Maine To Get $20M From Sackler Family Over Opioid Crisis

Introduction

Sackler family that owns Purdue Pharma and the company itself will pay $20 million to Maine over the opioid crisis caused in the state affecting numerous people.

Earlier, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy to settle the pending cases against the company, including thousands of individual claims. All the lawsuits against the company allege that Purdue used deceptive marketing techniques to boost the sale of its product, OxyContin, which resulted in the opioid crisis for the past two decades across the country.

The Sackler family and Purdue Pharma have agreed to a federal jury's orders where the owner and the company need to pay $4.3 billion. The amount will help for the prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts of opioid-affected individuals across the country.

Maine has been one of the most hard-hit states because of the opioid crisis. Estimates state that this year the state will surpass the last year's death toll of 500 deaths because of opioid overdose.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said no amount of money could undo the damage caused due to the opioid crisis. The loss is huge for the states and cities across the country, and people have lost their loved ones due to opioid overdose. The settlement will give some relief to the states and communities across the country. It will help to set up prevention, treatment, and recovery program to deal with the crisis.

The Sackler family will pay the settlement amount for the course of 9 years. It will even benefit thousands of victims who were affected because of the company's misconduct. Additionally, the family will be banned from the opioid business, and by 2024 the company will be sold or dissolved.

Earlier, Walmart was listed as one of the defendants in the multidistrict litigation (MDL) in Ohio with allegations that Walmart’s pharmacies improperly distributed opioids fueling the nationwide epidemic.

The MDL includes more than 2,000 opioid-related claims from the state, local, and tribal governments. The special master, David Cohen, who is overseeing the MDL discovery, ordered new declarations of Walmart witnesses by sanctioning the company for insurgence with a longstanding discovery order. The order states the defendants need to provide relevant documents from other opioid cases, which are not part of the consolidated cases.

Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, and other pharmacies requested to remove the 2019 motion that included cases outside of the MDL. The companies argued that ruling from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April 2020 was an overly broad request for discovery. However, in June 2020, the judge refused to withdraw the request.

Walmart provided a PowerPoint presentation to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which included documents covered under the order. The judge stated that Delaware's opioid litigation is related to Walmart's prescription policies, and shareholders are seeking for access to its records.

The judge stated that Walmart provided illogical explanations of the order to tackle the production of the documents and use it to delay or avoid complying with the court orders.

The spokesperson for Walmart said that the company is following the rules of the court and will continue to defend the litigation. However, the recently sanctioned order has only worsened the matters for the retailer in the litigation.

In October 2017, National Prescription Opiate Litigation MDL No. 2804 (In Re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation) was formed overlooked by U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster.

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