Hacker News Reader

Comment by realce | Hacker News Reader

>The court on a 5-4 vote ruled that the bankruptcy court did not have the authority to release the Sackler family members from legal claims made by opioid victims. As part of the deal, the family, which controlled the company, had agreed to pay $6 billion that could be used to settle opioid-related claims, but only in return for a complete release from any liability in future cases.

Is this actually a positive outcome or a kick-the-can?

View on HN

It depends on what your personal views are here.

If you wanted the outcome of the case to be at least some money going towards opioid treatment, then this decision could jeopardize that outcome.

However, if you thought that the Sackler family being able to escape any personal liability despite the myriad of evidence of many of their involvement in stoking the opioid epidemic— and they still got to keep a very sizeable amount of the family fortune— is morally repugnant and legally dubious, then this court decision is a positive.

I would personally prefer many of the executives and members of the Sackler family to be held liable, their assets seized, and formal charges brought against them. But that’s unlikely

I wouldn't be opposed to similar outcomes as the Chinese baby milk scandal in the end.

From Wikipedia:

> A number of trials were conducted by the Chinese government resulting in two executions, three sentences of life imprisonment, two 15-year prison sentences, and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). The former chairwoman of China's Sanlu dairy was sentenced to life in prison.

Yeah, that sounds nice :-)

To save everyone the google, several people went to jail with terms ranging from 5 to 15 years (after reduced sentences). Two people were executed.

They should have their wages garnished until the end of time.

Many of the most high profile names involved in Purdue Pharma or the Sackler family have retired or have passed away, so garnishment wouldn’t be as impactful as asset seizure (directly or from the estate of those that died)

Positive outcome. They earned hundreds of billions from their actions which resulted in the deaths of thousands.

Giving them permanent immunity was insane.

> resulted in the deaths of thousands.

The number the Supreme Court used in its decision was 247,000 deaths over a twenty year period. That's the verified number and therefore almost certainly lower than reality.

It also makes sense to me. If someone didn't join the class action, they should not be bound by its settlement, and should be free to pursue damage claims on their own.

deaths of thousands is a massive understatement. Just overdose deaths is probably getting close to a million. But they are also responsible for:

The people who don't OD but have their lives destroyed by opiods.

The family and friends who suffer because someone they know is an addict.

The time, money and energy society has spent trying to help addicts.

All the crimes, victims of crime and criminal justice costs that are a result of addiction.

They didn't kill thousands of people, they killed millions, affected every single person in the country negatively and contributed to the destabilization of our society.

The settlement was really a bit insane to me - we’re giving immunity to a family that killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed who knows how many more, and the money is being paid to local governments. In my area they planned on spending their share on things like “outreach” and free-to-the-addict narcan so they could continue to run around causing local mayhem.

Speaking as a man with a deceased father and aunt as a result of the Sacklers, really it’s a spit in the face kind of outcome that was shot down. They ought to be locked up next to El Chapo in ADX Florence.

Definitely a positive income. These people bear some of the responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

There is no way they should ever be immune from further punishments and get to live out the rest of their lives as billionaires.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Not quite. From the NY Times:

> In a 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a majority of the justices held that the federal bankruptcy code does not authorize a liability shield for third parties in bankruptcy agreements. Justice Gorsuch was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

My lineup was extracted from an AP story. Which is correct?

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioi...

The decision itself:

> GORSUCH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, ALITO, BARRETT, and JACKSON, JJ., joined. KAVANAUGH, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN, JJ., joined.

NYT was right and AP has now corrected theirs. Reload and check errata at the bottom.

The NY times. The AP story seems to have just been corrected.

You mean John Roberts instead of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

US$ 6bi to be disbursed across hundreds of local governments to use for settlements over millions of individuals is nothing compared to the damage the Sacklers inflicted. On top of that having a sweet deal to never see any future liability case is an egregious misjustice.

The minimum would be for them to be arrested, if we pushed drugs to someone who eventually dies from it we wouldn't be getting just a fine. At the scale they did it's simply inconceivable to me that paying a fine which is less than their profit is anywhere close to justice.

It really depends on what you mean by "pushed drugs". If you or I recommended that someone should get an oxycodone prescription from their doctor, and they eventually died after getting that prescription, I don't think we'd get arrested or fined. (And the Sacklers were never getting criminal immunity in the first place.)

That doesn’t describe what happened.

The recipients of the settlement are mixed about this. Some raised this suit because they felt the Sacklers were not sufficiently punished. Others felt that this was likely to be the best deal that could realistically achieved and dragging out proceedings in court for years and adding uncertainty of any settlement or victorious law suit was not worth the risks and emotional turmoil.

If you rob a bank and can pay the bank off with interest from the money you stole, was justice served?

If you sell drugs and use the interest from your profits to pay a fine, it doesn’t sound like punishment.

Part of the problem with this is that much of an old money wealth is from less than reputable sources (slavery, piracy, war, crime, smuggling, opium and alcohol).

From the article:

> Harrington objected to the release of additional claims against the Sacklers, saying it would be unfair to potential future plaintiffs.

> Purdue criticized Harrington’s role, saying that groups representing thousands of plaintiffs have signed on to the settlement, which could not have happened without the Sackler family contribution.

The concern is the set of current plaintiffs is incomplete and those plaintiffs who are missing are going to be hurt by this and the bankruptcy judge over this decision does not have the authority to approve this deal despite the current set of plaintiffs wanting it.

Negative outcome. Some important points that the article here did not emphasize: 1) The Sackler family was not actually a party to this litigation. They came to the table (with most of the settlement money) specifically to get these so called '3rd party releases'. 2) Purdue is basically broke. It's also an LLC. Thus, in order to go after the Sackler family's money, you basically have to claw back money that Purdue paid out to the family over the years. It's not impossible to do, but it requires a whole more litigation, the outcome of which is not at all certain.

Now, 3rd party releases are a genuinely weird thing: a court ruling that a party that's not directly involved in the case is immune from future lawsuits. Partially the reason it went all the way to the supreme court is that there was a circuit split - they were allowed in some circuits, but not others. However, (and this is according to a friend who represented the victims in the settlement), it's really unfortunate that THIS is the case where they get struck down. If the Sacklers walk away from the settlement, it makes the victims getting their payout much less certain, and certainly delays that payout by many years.

My understanding is that Piercing the Corporate Veil has gotten easier over the years. The more egregious the robber baron class has gotten the less sympathetic the courts have been.

> Thus, in order to go after the Sackler family's money, you basically have to claw back money that Purdue paid out to the family over the years.

Or you can find them personally, directly, criminally liable and their profits the result from a criminal conspiracy.

Personal crimes aren’t protected by the “veil” of LLC, so any assets of the family could be liable, after criminal conviction, for any civil claims from victims.

At least, I think.

IANAL, but I don't think this would help the victims (and incidentally, that could have still happened even with the settlement). If there were a criminal lawsuit of the Sacklers, and if that lawsuit was successful, the seized money would just go to the justice department.

The only way the victims actually see any money is through civil litigation.

> the seized money would just go to the justice department

The DoJ operates victims’ funds [1][2].

[1] https://ovc.ojp.gov/about/crime-victims-fund

[2] https://www.justice.gov/enrd/environmental-crime-victim-assi...

I would think civil forfeiture could be used to take all their assets if not then the drug dealers in my town need to each form an LLC.

Well, I don't think civil forfeiture specifically would work, but like I mentioned above, yes, if the justice department wanted to criminally charge the Sacklers, they could possibly win and get a judgement against some of the money. But then that money doesn't really go to the victims - it's just a way to punish the Sacklers.

The bankruptcy settlement had a bunch of money going to families of the victims, and also to the states for anti-addiction programs, and also some money towards documenting the Purdue wrongdoings, so that the public would have better visibility just HOW this was allowed to happen in the first place

Are the victims themselves getting anything? I thought it was States that were suing.

Well, it's a bankruptcy, so anyone can file a claim. The states have, but so have the victims and their families directly (as a class).

The next likely step to this will be how it affects the future hypothetical (but almost certain) trial of Boeing execs. Depending on what you want that to look like, then this was either positive or negative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com