The Sackler Family Wins Immunity from Future Opioid Lawsuits
npr.org
npr.org
I don't want to hear that the cases weren't strong enough blah blah. In the next room we just extradited a guy from the UK for copying bits. There is no longer rule of law, if there was the will there would be flash bangs and some parallel construction that could easily accomplish whatever level of justice was desired.
Do you have a good source for this? I'm genuinely curious. I've heard about the opioid crisis and Purdue Pharma but not this particular family. I see that they were on the board of Purdue. How were they directly connected to the deaths?
>>>
In 1952, the Sackler brothers bought a small patent-medicine company, Purdue Frederick, which was based in Greenwich Village and made such unglamorous staples as laxatives and earwax remover.
According to court documents, each brother would control a third of the company, but Arthur, who was occupied with his publishing and advertising ventures, would play a passive role. The journalist Barry Meier, in his 2003 book, “Pain Killer: A ‘Wonder’ Drug’s Trail of Addiction and Death,” remarks that Arthur treated his brothers “not as siblings but more like his progeny and understudies.”
Now Raymond and Mortimer, who became joint C.E.O.s, had a company of their own.
...
Richard Sackler worked tirelessly to make OxyContin a blockbuster, telling colleagues how devoted he was to the drug’s success.
> NPR acquired an early draft of a letter distributed by the drug company to groups supportive of the bankruptcy deal.
> The letter is framed as a direct appeal to DOJ officials and purports to be written by those injured by the company and members of the Sackler family.
> "We collectively speak for the overwhelming majority of the state and local governments, organizations, and individuals harmed by Purdue and the Sacklers," the letter states.
> There is no mention in the document of the company's role launching the effort or crafting the message.
Not shocking that the group largely responsible for the opioid crisis would lie like this, but still disgusting. I'm hoping the DOJ appeals.
"Hoping" won't make it happen; but writing to your Representatives just might have an effect.
alright I'll bite. What did bill gates do? Sure, he engaged in some anti-competitive practices, but does that deserve to be "stood up against a wall"?
Not worth standing against a wall, but Gates is a bad person.
Have you heard 'Episode 45: The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire - Bill Gates and Western Media' by Citations Needed Podcast on SoundCloud? https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so...
Transcript: https://link.medium.com/FXbDzrWDdjb
But I agree with you, violence is not the answer, or at least not a good answer, a very last resort answer -- but applies to sending people to prison too (prison is definitely a form of violence) for their "poor personal decisions" that harmed and killed others too, I hope you agree.
But yeah, it also applies to the billionairres.
On the other hand, the initial comment just said they "deserved" it, which is different than saying it should happen or we will make it happen. Although I'm reluctant to decide who "deserves" violence or not myself too. (And I hope you agree that this applies to deciding who "deserves" prison too...)
I think it's safe to say that at the minimum they deserve, and ought to lose all the money they made in profit from the scheme that ruined and ended lives. Like that's just the minimum starting point for what they ought to do to make restitution to the families, communities, and society that they hurt, and to make sure they don't do similar again. That this bare minimum starting point isn't being met is why people are so mad.
But anyway, they could have done all that good without the despicable practices they used to ensure that it got over-prescribed with under-awareness of it's dangers. Those were in no way necessary for supplying a useful pain relief drug. Those things were only about greed and lack of concern for who it hurt, not some kind of necessary collateral damage of trying to do good.
Nobody that does harm is without some redeeming qualities. (Not anyone we send to prison either). But those who do serious harm need to make restitution and repair for it. That starts, just starts, with giving up the fruits of that harm.
Purdue was in part so effective because they spent millions 'educating' (and bribing) doctors and making up a '5th vital sign' in order to push huge quantities of drugs. This was on purpose. Those face in pain posters you see still originally came from Purdue.
This always comes up in these threads, that perhaps we've swung too far in the direction of limiting access to pain meds for legit patients.
Which definitely has merit.
But that doesn't take away from what Sacklers and Kappor et al did.
from my understanding long term prescription of opiates in modern medicine wasn't really a thing before Purdue's marketing (and still isn't outside of late stage cancer in most countries).
So that's what I was getting at in responding to 'other opiates having been stigmatized in previous moral panics,' I think you'd have to go back to prohibition to find a similar time of heavy long term use 'medically'
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/28/its-not-e... - https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/10...
If you think the solution to any problem in society is "standing people up against a wall", you are literally the problem. You are the violent jackboot that actively harms society and has no value to discourse. You are a bad person.
That you can do that against an entire class of people because of some shared characteristic is horrifying. You are made up of the same stuff of historical dictators who put people in furnaces.
BTW, I wouldn't line up "terrorists", as they may have reasons (as in someone may have bombed their village or something).
Is thinking some people should be lined up the bigger problem, rather than actually doing things to get billions of $, like killing >10k people, or putting 100k or millions of people in misery?
I'm not sure how many furnaces you'd be able to fill before you ran out of billionaires. Seems there would be less of them than this 30% fine guy killed, so .. it might be a net benefit?
Technically, I'm a pacifist, so I'd lock them up. Not sure if OP meant it literally. Then again, if locking up proves unmanageable (try locking up a billionaire), it may be a reasonable option (for individuals). I wouldn't, but if someone had a go at them, I probably wouldn't stop him.
If you are trying to balance out the "benefit" of killing humans then you are lost. That's the "but it'd be really convenient to take land from the Jews and kill them!" kind of ethics.
I would suggest you disengage from whatever is giving you this kind of warped mentality.
I don't think they meant it as "cool", but it's usually more complex than that. Most terrorists have a cause and reasons for joining it sometimes it's brainwashing by a local trusted person ( e.g. priest or whatever), sometimes it's directly suffering against something and wanting to fight back - e.g. the IRA, the Chechen's against Russia, and many people against the US. When your market was bombed, and your wife, kid and neighbors got exploded because someone is playing empire, is it really that insane to want to blow up their wife and kids in retaliation, to bring the fight to them? I don't consider it so, even if it remains despicable and wrong.
However, a billionaire that knowingly sacrificed even hundreds of civilians purely out of greed, is worse. They weren't brainwashed to believe there will be virgins as reward, they knew killing people ( either through negligence or overworking or marketing drugs) will get them money and they do it. There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses. Of course that doesn't mean they should all be executed. Making them pay hefty taxes and better regulating the ways they made their money is a better way to deal with the issue. (However i understand how a person could look at the current situation, decide it's hopeless and think violence is the only possible way forward)
"Well, Terrorists are brainwashed and therefore aren't culpable." When you are about to press the plunger of a detonator in a market full of women and kids, that's a pretty universally bad thing - whether you're Muslim or Christian, rich or poor. You can wrap it up in this romantic story of how this young man was misled by promises of virgins but even very religious people have doubts and are logical beings. More than a few suicide bombers have backed out (or attempted to back out), and it's common for suicide bombers to be told there are punishments (of the earthly variety) for not completing their task.
It seems like you're holding a person responsible for a very complex web of events, to a very high standard and demanding extra punishment for them then you are for someone who is responsible much more directly for an event. If the billionaire was going around shooting people we would be much more likely as a society to condemn them to death, but we understand the more complex the casuality, the lesser the guilt. We do not condemn propagandists to death either.
The best I can figure it, it comes down to envy. Nobody envies the goat herder who blows up a market. Lots of people envy the rich. If you can't beat them, then make them suffer. Historically, people have also tied wealth to morality - being wealthy is good/evil, not simply an outcome of being skilled at making money.
If one side is (kind-of) hailed as heroes while the others are called terrorists, how could I pass judgement on one of them, without passing the same judgement on those we tend to call soldiers or commanders?
I don't think they are doing something unprecedented - in pretty much all wars atrocities were committed and wars are atrocities themselves. When they don't have other realistic ways to fight back, while not condoning, I cannot judge them.
Back to rich folks: If someone kills 10 people for whatever, another provokes a war for profit, killing many thousands, yet another organizes mass addiction for profit, killing many thousands, who has most and least guilt? Please answer.
Only one of them is a candidate for hanging in western world. Do you think it's proper?
That's really not what i said. There are terrorists who were just brainwashed, but there are those who personally suffered and want to avenge that. Both scenarios are much more understandable reasons to make people die people than greed, at least for me.
And i think the reason for that is empathy, not envy. I can emphasise with the person who lost their land(whose ancestors lost their lands) and is living in an apartheid state; the person who had friends and family killed by an invading power for profit; the person who is treated as a second class thing, with his fellow second class things murdered at will, in his own land by an occupying power; and the poor confused youngsters that was brainwashing to believe in magical people, righteous justice, how great things used to be, etc. They are wrong to kill civilians, but there are underlying issues that need to be fixed.
I can't emphathise with somebody like the fuckwits at Boeing sacrificing human lives with incompetence and negligence to abide by an arbitrary deadline for money, or a fossil fuel executive lobbying against climate change and for his people-killing planet-destroying oil or coal. I can't put myself in their shoes and I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if i were at there place.
I believe my point stands.
Sometimes i wonder how intelligent people in tech can reasonably make some of the arguments that they do and then i come across arguments such as these in the wild and cringe some more.
"Through a warped lens the worker is equally as bad as the exploiter, hmm! Better not think critically of the exploiter or you could be next!"
Good lord.
By your logic, you should be stood up against a wall.
How so? My argument is that it's unlikely for an individual to accumulate and hold a certain level of wealth without being a jerk. What does that have to do with middle-class tech workers?
Should you (not you, dear poster, but the hypothetical FAANG employee) be put against the wall? no. But you also have no right to complain about inequality or encroachments on freedom or privacy if you're actively working to aid those ends.
You either quit, or you shut up. Those are the options.
Please don't equate working in a system with not also simulatenously wanting the system to drastically change.
You've made your choice that your parents' comfort is more important than some people's lives. You do your job, and maybe you do it with a heavy sense of personal shame. But you don't get to publicly bloviate about how horrible the machine is whilst you're actively working to help it function.
Your position on “Billionaires” is idiotic since it classifies people into a cohort that you deem must all be guilty purely by a measure of their wealth.
I’m making the point that if I were to classify you similarly with no regard for your individual contributions to society or how you choose to live your life, but instead by your association with companies I deem “evil”, you will protest the unfairness as you have.
So thank you for making my point for me, I’m glad you see the irony in how your viewpoint shifts when you’re on the receiving end of similar “judgement through grouping”
The actions of the Sacklers caused the deaths of over 500k people, and they walk away with a large fine and civil judgment immunity.
They really don't fuck around, and if the CCP doesn't fall apart from internal strife, they've probably got the 21st century in the bag. Might end up being the best for the survival of humanity and exploration of the universe, who knows.
FDR managed to stop his fellow class members from pushing too far, and got the New Deal passed. Now that is unwound, and the tipping point is far too near, again.
The main differences? Street mobs won't be a thing, mob justice and guillotines won't be a thing, monarchy isn't existent, no foreign neighbors about to invade us opportunistically, it's a lot of differences.
Fundamentally, I don't see getting out of the status quo peacefully anytime soon. I think division and partisanship will remain until the boomers die out, at which point we have a chance to leave behind our current quagmire.
There were "mostly peaceful" protests that destroyed many of the larger city centers last year.
The very real threat to the normally peaceful suburbs that had police closing the Indiana/Illinois border near me made me strongly reconsider my need to be able to respond to such violence, and it created a large spike in gun sales across the US
>monarchy isn't existent
The donor class runs the Federal Government by proxy
>no foreign neighbors about to invade us opportunistically
Unless of course, you count 9/11
Yes this is a low value comment but I'm speechless. The argument "We potentially screwed up so much that there would be so many people suing us that it would cause legal chaos. So as a result we should be granted full waivers of liability to avoid the lawsuits." Is so brazen as to be absurd.
But the fact it was a successful argument and won is what's astounding.
Unchecked corporate power is a phenomenal national liability.
Sure, you can embroil the company in 1000 lawsuits, but the end result will be lawyers getting all the money.
No, none of the people getting immunity are filing for bankruptcy, which is one of the absolutely ridiculous parts of this settlement. Why should a bankruptcy settlement even apply to them if that's the case?
Bankruptcy court is pretty much always like this, though. I remember the same kinds of things coming up during, e.g., SCO.
all the sackler billions should be clawed back and commensurately redistributed to literally everyone else.
Not even that. They agreed to give 4.3 billion dollars over the next 9 years. Given how much net worth they have, over that 9 years they will earn that much, or more, in interest. They're just giving up the next 9 years of growth, they'll still be multi-billionaires.
There is no acceptable punishment for a crime of this scale that doesn't adequately deter future criminals. Billions in rewards isn't just inadequate, it's disrespectful to every victim and their families.
Well this is just a self-justifying statement. "Acceptable," "adequately," so many ways to weasel out of assigning any consequences. Let's just discuss how adequate a hypothetical punishment will be in the future that we both definitely know facts about.
>Billions in rewards isn't just inadequate, it's disrespectful to every victim and their families.
Disrespectful to remedy the loss of one or more breadwinners? Disrespectful to prevent descendants from firing up the corporate grill again? I don't know what ethical standard you're using, but it seems to elevate suffering and misfortune.
Disgorgement and prison, the facts bear this out. That they were able to buy their way out of this is more evidence that the nation strives to protect criminals who have money and are white.
You're the one that invented that dichotomy, so you'll need to support it with more than speculation as a counterargument or admit it's just that.
The US can afford $4 billion in opioid relief efforts on its own (what's the yearly budget at federal and state level already?) so it's not like we're in a position to beg for scraps here. But really there's no reason why there would be nothing left of their fortune after lawyer fees.
More importantly, this stance makes it ok to make a profit this way. They would come out of this with billions of dollars more than they started with and no threat of ever being legally liable again. They should not have that money.
They set up a pharmaceutical empire with thousands of reps pushing disinformation to doctors and patients, they should absolutely have to deal with thousands of lawsuits come home to roost.
Exactly what I was thinking. Go after the Sacklers, relentlessly, as long as it takes, until they have nothing, and hopefully are in jail. The few billions of dollars coming out of this settlement aren't even a rounding error in the US federal budget, we can afford to just pay it ourselves. I'm happy to do that if it means putting the Sacklers behind bars, bankrupt.
Another option that I’m fond of: send them to jail for a very long time.
It is the playbook that CEOs with golden parachutes use as their companies go under, it is the playbook that Adam Neumann used when exiting WeWork, and it is even used by jailed business owners for leniency ("If I'm in jail, I'll have to shut my company and all of my poor employees will lose their jobs")
At some point, though, I do worry that metaphorical pitchforks become real ones. There are literally hundreds of thousands of family members of those who died due to Sacklers' greed, and they get to read that the Sacklers will remain one of the wealthiest families in the world.
> If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
- J Paul Getty
- Me
I hope they intervene here and or follow up with criminal charges against the individual Sacklers as individuals.
DoJ can't (except in special circumstances) legally stand in the place of harmed individuals and go after liable actors; because this a bankruptcy case DoJ is involved though, and opposes the settlement, as stated in the article.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/holder-big-banks-...
I also remember reading a book about epo and J&J. There the situation also was that the government prosecutors were reluctant to touch the case because they knew J&J would outspend them with their lawyers. Then a private lawyer took on the case and after years reached a settlement but in the process was close to bankrupting his law firm.
Veey easily if you are a big corp and its an existential threat; the DoJ has lots of funding, sure, but also lots of competing priorities.
I am not disputing the existence of the general phenomenon, I am saying the facts of the immediate case (including those directly in the article) contradict the assertion that it is the factor responsible for the decision at issue in the case under discussion.
The incentives associated with having your career tied to elections can end up being suboptimal, so we could debate what the most effective method would be, but it's an example of how a judge can be removed from power by the public.
This seems to be confirmed by the first sentence of the wikipedia article on "Judicial independence", but the second sentence also mentions not being subject to influence from "private or partisan interests".
>Plenty of judges have to renew their mandate by standing for election.
this is mostly a US thing, and only in certain states. Federal judges are appointed AFAIK.
It seems obvious to me that judges apply their own ideologies in their rulings. But IANAL, maybe I'm just too cynical.
We have decided that economic stability and stability in general is more important than honesty, accountability, abiding by the law, or pretty much anything else. If we hold anyone accountable for anything the stock market might go down.
The same seems to happen in politics, but it works a bit differently. If you hold a politician responsible for gross incompetence or worse, such as George Bush Jr. for Iraq WMDs or Donald Trump for January 6th, then they or their allies might retaliate or hold back legislation that you want passed. On top of that extreme partisan division makes this worse by making it virtually impossible to get members of a politician's own party to hold them responsible for anything. I realized recently that extreme partisanship makes it easier for politicians of both sides to get away with bullshit.
She was always struggling with addiction, but never did any form of heroin until she injured herself while walking down a stairwell drunk. She was prescribed OxyContin and quickly became extremely addicted.
My last conversation with her before she died was one where she was desperately begging me to find her any kind of opiate painkiller I could. This was because she had been cut off by her doctor who wouldn't renew her prescription. She ended up procuring some heroin which was apparently laced with fentanyl. She snorted it in her car in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven in Washington DC and overdosed and died in 2015.
I'm not going to pretend like she was living a productive life because she certainly wasn't. I'm also not going to pretend like she wasn't already an addict in other ways. But this product and this evil family who knowingly pushed it into Appalachia and other parts of the US where the residents are ignored by the political parties has caused tremendous damage to many people.
The first time I lost a friend to an overdose on oxycontin was in 2000 when I was a freshman in college. We were in southwestern Virginia, right in the heart of the emerging crisis. He was my co-worker at a Pizza Hut.
Nobody gave a shit about the droves of people dying until it hit New England 15 years later. It was only then that anyone even took notice in the media.
The biggest insult added to this injury for me personally was when I was a contestant in a hackathon for the US health and human services department in 2017. This is the organization that is in charge of the FDA and they had a whole slew of speakers talking about the opioid epidemic. At no point in the entire event did any of these bureaucrats admit any form of culpability and complicity in approving this drug. As far as I know not a single person in the FDA or HHS was ever fired for allowing this horrible product to be pushed like junk food into this country's most forgotten communities.
Just like cannabis was made illegal, to arrest anti-war hippies.
I am vehemently against most aspects of the drug war. I've even grown multiple cannabis plants with a hydroponic system/grow tent I setup in my basement. Heroin and opiates are on a different level due to the physical aspects of the addiction/withdrawal, as well as the effects opiates have on suppressing psychological pain and creating a slippery slope for treatable mental illness to untreatable mental illness.
While I support allowing doctors to administer it in designated, supervised locations, I'm 100% against the Vancouver inspired approaches advocated for by people like Johann Hari. I was once a supporter of these approaches. I witnessed implementation in 3 different communities. I was wrong, and it's an utter disaster. Giving needles to addicts so they can continue to support the black market is a dumb idea. I watched it turn entire neighborhoods into inhospitable hell holes in Asheville, SF, and Vancouver. No thank you.
For any company, not just this example, culpability should stop at the Board, and then any employee of company that willfully commits wrongdoing. The owners should have 100% of their equity at stake, but claimants against actions taken by the company shouldn't pierce the liability curtain of the owners.
Now in this case, at least 8 members of the family did have directorship influence, not just ownership.
I doubt the settlement is just, though I'm not sure some other kind of lawsuit would have been able to retrieve the 4.3 Billion the family is giving up in the settlement. But I'm also fairly certain we don't just want dismantle the notional of limited liability in general
So is it Ok to suck out money and leave the responsibility behind? Is that what limited liability is there for?
I am all for limited liability protecting you from ordinary business failure (allowing people to take some risks). But this goes far beyond that.
Source for this happening? If so it'd fall under fraudulent conveyance. I suspect what actually happened was that they slowly withdrew the money years before bankruptcy or even the lawsuits, which makes it hard to go after them.
>Around the same time, from approximately 2008 to 2018, at the Named Sacklers’ request, billions of dollars were transferred out of Purdue as cash distributions of profits and transfers of assets into Sackler family holding companies and trusts. Certain of these distributions and transfers were made with the intent to hinder future creditors and/or were otherwise voidable as fraudulent transfers.
Edit: Just going through this document makes me wonder how people can carry water for these demons
>The same day, David Sackler replied-all by email: [W]hat do you think is going on in all of these courtrooms right now? We’re rich? For how long? Until which suits get through to the family?
>In or about April 2008, Richard Sackler wrote a memorandum to Kathe Sackler, Ilene Sackler, David Sackler, Jonathan Sackler, and Mortimer D. A. Sackler in which he discussed limiting the Sackler family’s risk in the ownership of Purdue: “[T]he most certain way for the owners to diversify their risk is to distribute more free cash flow so they can purchase diversifying assets.”
These aren't people acting in ignorance, this is family essentially running a legalized drug cartel and has today just protected all their assets. I'm sure the negative externalities of these individuals will cause damage for decades to come in America's heartland.
That's an allegation, not a legal fact nor even an admission. The allegations are included in the settlement to clarify the scope in case there's a subsequent dispute. On its face it sounds plausible, but proving it in a court of law is a different matter entirely.
That seems different than the parent post's claim of withdrawing "shortly before it declared bankruptcy" and closer to my suspicion of "slowly withdrew the money years before bankruptcy".
>Certain of these distributions and transfers were made with the intent to hinder future creditors and/or were otherwise voidable as fraudulent transfers.
This seems to be the problem. It's impossible to prove whether they were doing so to "hinder future creditors" or to simply pay out profits. Not even the state wants to claim all of those distributions were "fraudulent". They only claim certain ones are, presumably the ones near the 2018.
>In or about April 2008, Richard Sackler wrote a memorandum to Kathe Sackler, Ilene Sackler, David Sackler, Jonathan Sackler, and Mortimer D. A. Sackler in which he discussed limiting the Sackler family’s risk in the ownership of Purdue: “[T]he most certain way for the owners to diversify their risk is to distribute more free cash flow so they can purchase diversifying assets.”
>These aren't people acting in ignorance, this is family essentially running a legalized cartel and has today just protected all their assets. I'm sure the negative externalities these individuals have caused will cause damage for decades to come in America's heartland.
I see how that might seem super evil, but then again it's also totally consistent with how you should manage investments. If you made an outsized gain in one asset (eg. because you sat on DOGE from a few years ago and it went to the moon), you shouldn't sit on it. You should diversify it, like selling it and buying other assets.
This just seems like a massively sympathetic view to the company. It's rare for any corporation to distribute most, if not all, of a companies FCF to shareholders. For most public pharmaceutical companies that spending goes to R&D. Furthermore even if you call it "normal", then this kind of shareholder enrichment could be argued to be a gross mismanagement of company funds. Trying to paint this as "normal" is incredibly odd, especially when they call out future litigation as a reason to hoard cash.
>On September 8, 2014, Mortimer D. A. Sackler emailed Jonathan Sackler, stating that there had been “a huge depreciation in [Purdue’s] bottom line and more importantly shareholder value over the past 5+ years” and that Purdue was in a “death spiral.”
And despite what the letter of the law says, I can't imagine wanting to support such a system where once can knowingly poison middle America for decades and run away with profits. At the very least it's incredibly unpatriotic and does more to threaten American hegemony than any quagmire in the middle east. This isn't a case where they were just "diversifying" as good financial advice - they foresaw their litigation issues in 2008. The fact it took more than 10 years to get to the court has more to do with the slowness of our justice system rather than the Sackler's financial savvy.
It's the view that the defense is going to argue and the prosecution will have to disprove.
>It's rare for any corporation to distribute most, if not all, of a companies FCF to shareholders
You can't convict people on "rare" behavior.
>then this kind of shareholder enrichment could be argued to be a gross mismanagement of company funds.
It's a private company. They have wide latitude to do whatever they want.
>And despite what the letter of the law says, I can't imagine wanting to support such a system where once can knowingly poison middle America for decades and run away with profits.
Yeah, the flip side is going after them jack ma style.
>This isn't a case where they were just "diversifying" as good financial advice - they foresaw their litigation issues in 2008. The fact it took more than 10 years to get to the court has more to do with the slowness of our justice system rather than the Sackler's financial savvy.
That does raise an interesting issue. If there's threat of litigation, how much money should you have to keep on hand? That should prevent the issue we saw with perdue. Should companies that are currently being sued be prevented from paying out dividends? What about companies that are being sued all the time, or frivolous lawsuits? What if the lawyers in 2008 claim (or even honestly believe) that the lawsuits have a slim chance of succeeding?
The defense is getting paid millions to carry water for the Shacklers, you don't have to.
>You can't convict people on "rare" behavior.
You absolutely can, what are you talking about? The entire basis of criminal negligence is based on what an reasonable actor would do. I find it hard to believe that a "reasonable" CEO would effectively dial R&D spending to 0. At the very least other shareholders could sue for securities fraud.
>Yeah, the flip side is going after them jack ma style.
I'm not sure your what the problem with this is? I have no problem with the state going after billionaires who act criminally negligent nor do I have any problem with the state going after anyone else who breaks the law. Why would I sacrifice millions of Americans and the potential future of the country for a couple of bad actors. If I take your "China bad" argument at face value, why should America cripple it's own population during the critical moment when it will need to answer to Chinese hegemony? I guess it would be a sick just desserts for China to exercise power over an opiod addicted west.
>Should companies that are currently being sued be prevented from paying out dividends? What about companies that are being sued all the time, or frivolous lawsuits?
You are talking hypotheticals, but the law isn't C++ code. Intent matters, which is why we have judges. It's my belief the prosecution should be able to show that the Sacklers intentionally sabotaged Purdue pharma in an effort to extract as much capital as possible before the federal government and other litigious parties sued Purdue Pharma. That would be fraudulent transfer - they weren't paying themselves massive dividends to "diversify their portfolio", they were doing it to prevent their assets from being frozen. The most vile part about it is the fact they knowingly engaged in what should be a criminal enterprise and got away with it - this is something that simply shouldn't be allowed to happen in future. Again, the economic burden from opiod misuse costs us a cool $80B according to the CDC. That's your tax dollars cleaning up the mess of this criminal enterprise. Those are families destroyed that now have to depend on the welfare state.
Limited liability is not about, and has many asterisks before it applies.
But it isn't clear to me that the owners having criminal liability was the basis the bankruptcy court was operating under ... though it is clear both side thought it was the way things _could_ go, so they preempted that state.
I'm sure there are other dynamics at play but Xi has probably started seeing the same thing in China, hence the recent crackdown on said corporate power.
I'm just talking about slapping down billionaires, cracking down on gambling, making education equal to all kids, etc.
None of it is worth the loss of free speech.
The US is happy to relegate itself to a Russia-like plutocracy as China eats our lunch.
Bonus points if they can target individuals, even the au pair gets to survive these days!
But that's not what's happening? At least from my reading of the article, they settled with the state, that's it. The judge wasn't like "you're off the hook because the lawsuits were too complicated".
>The complex bankruptcy plan, confirmed by Drain at a hearing in White Plains, N.Y., was negotiated in a series of intense closed-door mediation sessions over the past two years.
>The deal grants "releases" from liability for harm caused by OxyContin and other opioids to the Sacklers, hundreds of their associates, as well as their remaining empire of companies and trusts.
>In return, they have agreed to pay roughly $4.3 billion, while also forfeiting ownership of Purdue Pharma.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-sackler-family-money...
Individuals injured by the Sacklers are not party to the current case, but are now unable to sue. Or am I misreading?
We're accelerating into a new feudal age. The aristocracy becomes, or is already, unimpeachable.
Probably will take the form of looming $20 billion in open interest expiring worthless on options on whether $x pharma exec will be alive by $y date, that trades on a decentralized options exchange that uses a decentralized prediction market amm liquidity pool as a underlying price feed.
It worked for the banks in 2008, why wouldn't it work for them?
Who says crime doesn't pay? Kill 100s of 1000s of people, destroy millions of lives, and walk away with a cool 6 Billion dollars.. what's not to like?
When the Law fails to be just, no wonder Vigilantes step in.
Is this article a draft that somehow got published before it was ready?
The bailouts of 2008 did enormous damage to people’s trust in justice, so do the constantly too low fines for corporate wrongdoing. The Sackler settlement is just another step in the erosion of trust.
No wonder people are clamoring for populist strongmen who will “drain the swamp”.
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
If you disagree share your opinion. Best place to do that is too your representative.
Knowingly peddle highly addictive substances, lie about their nature, kill millions, destroy countless lives, and get to keep billions of dollars. it is just hard to fathom.
America will be suffering the consequences of these actions for a generation.
>Knowingly peddle highly addictive substances, lie about their nature, kill millions, destroy countless lives, and get to keep billions of dollars. it is just hard to fathom.
AFAIK the problem isn't that Sacklers is "above the law", it's that what the Sacklers wasn't (probably couldn't be) convicted under the law. If they actually were convicted of wrongdoing, going after the money would be easy.
A plea bargain is where a bargain is struck between some prosecuting authority and the accused wherein the accused pleads guilty in exchange for some nominally lesser punishment.
WHat happened here is one plea bargain that included (but should not have included by any rational definition of justice) a global bar on the accused being prosecuted for any other crimes. See if you can find an example of that logic being applied to a low level drug dealer or non-rich person.
These are all widely used tools for the lower rungs of the drug trade. Why is everything with these guys some kind of civil lawsuit tit for tat? I'm sure there are other dealers out there with a LLC, but they don't get this treatment.
>The seizures?
All the good stuff is probably in their lawyers' offices or offshore. Moreover, I doubt you'll find the smoking gun email that's like "plz transfer money I don't want our creditors to get it".
>The wiretaps?
>The parallel construction?
and what, hope that they catch them in the act of admitting that they made such transfers with the intent of hiding them from creditors? Besides, I suspect most of the illegal stuff (eg. getting it approved, hiding the results) were done before the public/government was aware, so wiretapping after fact wouldn't do much.
>The hundreds of criminal charges meant to coerce a settlement?
They can afford the lawyers.
"[W]hat do you think is going on in all of these courtrooms right now? We’re rich? For how long? Until which suits get through to the family? I think [the investment banker’s] advice was just violated in a Virginia courtroom. My thought is to lever up where we can, and try to generate some additional income. We may well need it. . . . Even if we have to keep it in cash, it’s better to have the leverage now while we can get it than thinking it will be there for us when we get sued."[1]
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1329736/downl...
The Sacklers get to walk free, though.
I agreed with the Bank Of England governer that this presented a huge moral hazard.
A similar moral hazard is seen here. Maybe no laws were broken. But the moral hazard argument suggests laws similar to those that targeted Robber barons (ie tax on those with incomes over 5 billion dollars)
1. 10X-100X more addictive
2. Infinite more likelihood of death from over consumption.
Strong opioids should only be used under careful supervision.
Opioids in general don't all have the same addictive potential or acute danger, and most of the ones commonly used don't have severe chronic effects (besides addiction) and are generally considered safe to use if used with proper moderation.
The problem with this case though is not someone is liable for selling addictive drugs to willing participants. The problem is that someone deliberately marketed a highly addictive substance (more addictive than morphine) as a less addictive alternative to existing opiate drugs.
This is not the first time this happened, Bayer marketed Heroin as a less addictive alternative to morphine, and it was widely used on civil war veterans in the US which led to widespread addiction and we still live with the legacy of that today in the form of widespread heroin use. BTW heroin, like oxycontin (the drug being discussed in this thread), is far more addictive than morphine.
They are basically all pro-drugs to morphine from what I understand.
some evidence I've read that the longer term, higher dose the great % of abuse.
On the order of 4-26% .....
i think ROA makes a difference but i can't find a quick source for that, and if you're shooting it you're already an addict lol.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdos... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3280085/#R10
But opiates are FAR more addictive.
A big reason we have so many deaths is adulterated drugs where you don't know what opiate is in it or how strong it is. And then you physically can't live without it so you shoot up anyways.
In set controlled doses, with pills, powder, or clean needles it wouldn't be that dangerous. I think alcohol would be more so under those controls. So long as you don't take so much you nod off while driving or something. Just like drinking...
Personally I think heavy stims and opiates would be something you have to show an addiction too in order to get the good stuff from the Gov. Kind of cart and horse, maybe it would destroy the profitability of the drug trade enough we'd have fewer first time users.
I'm 100% for MDMA, coke and similar to be available in small controlled quantities capped to like once a month at a special pharmacy. Can always work around that (eh em cough syrup) but I think way safer and way better externalities with all the death from drug trade.
People will use drugs no matter what. We should see the humanity and reduce harm as much as possible. Not to mention it would likely save a lot of money.
These WhatsApp Messages Show the Opioid Crisis Was Just a Big PR Headache for the Sackler Family https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/these-whatsapp-...
The goal is to reach a final resolution. You’d have to be out of your mind to enter into any such agreement if it left you open to future risk of liability.
Would you agree to a plea bargain if the DA said “ok, you agree to a 1 year jail term and if we decide to prosecute you in the future for another related crime, well tough”.
Forget fair, how is this even legal? Why have we not seen criminal charges levied?
The family is losing their equity in the bankruptcy. The question is if the family, as both owners and/or directors of the company, need to give back funds they received as dividends from the company, back to the company (under the bankruptcy courts guidance to give out to its creditors, including parties owed money due to harm).
There hasn't been a specific criminal case against the family, so the prosecutors can't just seize the profits as proceeds of a criminal enterprise. But the family clearly benefited from and directed a company the willfully sold opioids that lead to the deaths of so many, and the corporate malfeasance is something that has been adjudicated.
Here is a 60-minutes interview with DEA agents who were inexplicably taken off cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd-43K-rdQA
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
Because the Sacklers weren't just board members, it's privately held, and they actively micro managed and directed their criminal actions.
Kapoor went to jail, but he was dumb enough to put on paper the reality of what all these 'marketing' tactics are: bribes and lies.
You might know you've gone too far when you have to sneak in a law change to get rid of the only enforcement mechanism DEA had to stop (pause) such an insanely huge volume of pills through distributors. Thousands upon thousands at once to tiny towns.
One feature of our for-profit marketable drug industry is they know exactly who is prescribing and where. They then go after those doctors to push more.
They also knew it was all a lie from the start. They put the FDA employee in charge of approving the label in a hotel to write it together with their corporate staff.
Relying on the most flimsy, misrepresented single scientific piece of paper to pretend their pills might be less addictive. Then using those few words to launch a marketing assault of death and pain.
It's just like this settlement! Get your own lawyers to write it up and the government will rubber stamp it.
You can build a massive fortune by:
1) creating addictive painkillers 2) push the company to promote the drug to sales reps 3) cause an epidemic responsible for killing 50,000 Americans 4) blame it on the company 6) get granted immunity from the problem you created if you decide to donate a fraction of your fortune (John Oliver explained how the spackler family can donate periodically based on surplus from investments)
At the same time I think this is unbelievable but I'm also not surprised.
Also the opioid epidemic has done way more damage to this nation than what a few billion can fix.
Meanwhile real patients suffering from chronic pain now have more difficult access to effective treatments due to the moral panic.
How about some individual responsibility? If you choose to misuse your pain medication so that you develop addiction and then go further and transfer to using street drugs and overdose on heroin cut with fentanyl then it is your own fault.
Though I will note the transfer to street drugs is often impelled by the above mentioned moral panic restricting supply.
I say this as somebody who had a family member die of an "heroin" (who knows what's in it) overdose after starting with perscribed painkillers.
"The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone." – Frank Wilhoit
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-c...
This is not healthy on so many levels. We urgently need credible politicians who are by, of and for the people instead of the career lobbyist controlled bureaucrats currently in power in the western world
I no longer read about the past with wonder; I wonder about our future.
As an aside, I wonder why, in spite of abundant and blindingly obvious evidence, people in the US have a hard time believing that deep seated corruption exists in US government. When something gets done (or, as the case may be, not done) by e.g. Russian government everyone in Russia knows money is changing hands under the table, in 100% of the cases. What makes anyone in the US think it's any different here? This case in particular is an obvious mockery of justice, and yet we have people on this forum rejecting this reality and substituting it with their own.
The problem here isn't opioid drugs being abused. The problem is that a particular proprietary compound was marketed as a safer alternative while the ones doing the marketing knew it was more dangerous than alternative existing drugs.
Have you heard of the Opium Wars? Including perhaps the one China is waging against the US right now? Tens of thousands of deaths every year - nobody is even aware.
No. But humanity all things considered is doing fine with drugs available outside a hospital, which was the statement I was replying to. I never made anything like a statement that "people dying is fine."
Gibney's documentary (highly recommend) reported that the FDA person in charge of approving the label, actually sat in a crappy motel room with a Purdue staffer.
That's like asking the oil and gas company what you think their pollution regulations should be. Which I mean depending on the administration does happen...
That label - based on one piece of flimsy, misinterpreted study - is what gave Purdue an excuse to sell a bunch of BS.
How come the US Govt's $4bln "take" is not considered ill-gotten gain, particularly given it was the US FDA (Woodcock, in her prior role at agency) that essentially sanctioned rampant opioid prescriptions?
Lying to people about addictive potential, causing many of them to die, for a profit is far and away from a government collecting collecting taxes on economic activity.
Broadly, the things Purdue is accused of are 1) Aggressively marketing opioids to doctors, and 2) Lobbying the states to change various laws around prescription and marketing of opioids
The problem is that for direct liability, there are two more actors that need to be considered - the doctors, and the patients themselves. Doctors are considered to be experts, and patients are often breaking the law when they misuse opioids. Both of these facts break the chain of liability, and so arguing that Purdue is legally liable for the ultimate addiction of the patient is difficult.
As a result, people have tried to sue Purdue under more general "public nuisance" statutes, rather than regular tort liability. A public nuisance is when someone interferes with a right that the general public shares in common. However, this area of law is not very well developed - a lot of it is carryover from old British law, and winning those cases isn't a slam dunk. So there are certain objectors to the settlement, but I don't know why people think that it would be easy to hold the Sacklers criminally responsible or to get more money than this settlement.
The doctors were fed dodgy studies and information that what they were prescribing was safe. And you can hardly blame a patient who receives pain treatment and gets addicted to opiates when they were also informed they were safe.
And I also agree that you can't blame a patient for getting addicted. However, in US law there is something called the "clean hands doctrine", which denies remedies if the accuser has acted in bad faith wrt the subject of the claim. In practice this might translate to arguing that because the patient is breaking the law in misusing opioids, they don't deserve damages.
All I'm trying to say is that while Purdue is definitely morally responsible, legally it's kinda difficult.
The reason it’s hard to prosecute somebody for something that was legal at the time is because that’s a giant can of worms to open.
I think you may want to consider the doctors' perspectives, by general theme, that may or may not coincide with groups of years, but maybe not quite decades.
(1) Pain is inadequately treated, some patients are in a lifetime of pain.
(2) Pain is being adequately treated, we have these new non-addictive pills "Pain as the 5th vital sign" [1]
(3) Doctors are experiencing litigation due to OD-by-misuse and patients doctor shopping, dropping of "Pain as a 5th vital sign" [2]
(4) Doctors recoiling in general from any type of narcotic prescriptions, issuing very tiny doses, doses which cannot be used for, sending the patients onto a pain management doctor that has become the de facto only doctor willing to withstand the DEA scrutiny [3]
[1] https://www.bjanaesthesia.org/article/S0007-0912(17)54182-3/...
[2] https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2016/6/16/ama-drops-...
[3] https://www.hcrcenters.com/blog/doctor-refuses-to-prescribe-...
But now, we have swung too far to the opposite extreme.
Get a major surgery, and a 3 day script for the weakest narcotic.