Courtesy | Attorney General Maura Healey's office
Attorney General Maura Healey
July 8, 2021
Healey: $4B Purdue opioid settlement will unlock Sackler secrets
By State House News Service
Gov. Charlie Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey will formally announce an agreement Thursday afternoon to resolve the state's lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, a deal in which Massachusetts is expected to get $90 million of a $4.3 billion settlement.
Healey, who filed the first state lawsuit against individual members of the OxyContin maker's controlling Sackler family, said the agreement requires Purdue to be wound down or sold by 2024, bans the Sacklers from the opioid business and orders more than 30 million documents related to opioid sales, marketing and distribution to be made public.
The settlement marks one of the largest payments to resolve a law enforcement action in U.S. history, Healey's office said.
In Massachusetts, opioid overdose deaths rose 5% to a record high in 2020, according to a report released by Massachusetts Department of Public Health on May 12.
People from Worcester who died of overdose also rose 21% during 2020, from 81 to 98.
"While I know this resolution does not bring back loved ones or undo the evil of what the Sacklers did, forcing them to turn over their secrets by providing all the documents, forcing them to repay billions, forcing the Sacklers out of the opioid business, and shutting down Purdue will help stop anything like this from ever happening again," the attorney general said. "This case has also shown us that our legal system needs to change so that billionaires are never allowed to manipulate the bankruptcy system. I am grateful to the families whose strength and perseverance will continue to guide our work to combat this crisis in the years ahead."
Baker plans to travel to Healey's office on the 20th floor of One Ashburton Place at 12:45 p.m. to make the announcement, the governor's office announced about 40 minutes before Healey's office published its own press release with details of the agreement.
The New York Times reported Thursday morning that 15 states, Massachusetts and New York among them, had agreed to drop opposition to the opioid manufacturer's bankruptcy plan as part of the agreement. Healey's office said the resolution was filed in bankruptcy court Wednesday night and is subject to approval.
In 2019, when Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that it had agreed to a roughly $10 billion settlement with 24 state attorneys general, Healey opposed the settlement as "incomplete" without the Sacklers putting up some of their own personal fortunes.
"I rejected it for the following reasons: first of all, this proposed deal isn't worth nearly what they say it is. It doesn't require the Sacklers to pay back a dime of the billions of dollars they sucked out of Purdue through the sales of Oxy over the last many years. And also it doesn't provide the kind of accountability and transparency that we need," Healey said Monday. "We need the documents, we need the story told. That's the only way we're going to get justice in this case."
Healey first sued the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma in June 2018, alleging that they "engaged in a deadly, deceptive scheme to sell opioids in Massachusetts" and profited from the drug epidemic they helped create.
Healey's complaint alleged that Purdue "created the epidemic and profited from it through a web of illegal deceit" by misleading doctors and patients to get more people using their drugs, at "higher and more dangerous doses" and for longer periods of time, as well as by deploying falsehoods to keep patients away from "safer alternatives."
A total of 671 Massachusetts residents who filled prescriptions for Purdue opioids between 2009 and 2019 later died of an opioid overdose, according to the suit. According to Healey's office, Purdue sent sales representatives to Massachusetts doctors offices, clinics and hospitals more than 150,000 times between 2008 and 2019.
Staff Writer Katherine Hamilton contributed to this story.
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