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Comment by inasio | Hacker News Reader

Matt Levine has covered this several times in the past, worth reading. From memory, the Purdue family had put away their money in legally sheltered arrangements, so even an unfavorable decision (to the Sacklers) would likely not be able to claw back much money. The previous deal traded the risk of trial for a perceived as decent compensation. My read is that the majority in the supreme court disagreed that you can always financial-engineer your way out of trials

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They were (apparently) sheltering money specifically to pay for personal legal damages, and they voluntarily offered it back during the bankruptcy proceedings in exchange for giving up their liability.

The court ruling is not about the legality of their financial shenanigans, but the authority of the bankruptcy court on deciding such matters.

Lawyers are fixated on the money for obvious reasons, but the money will never really fix what the Sacklers did (particularly for the many victims who are now dead.) Restitution is largely a farce and we should be focusing on retribution.

Removing the profitability angle mildly dissuades this sort of behavior in the future.

I'm all for rendering the Sacklers paupers. Whether that money is given to surviving victims or piled up and burned matters less.

I'm really not sure what other retribution you're suggesting. There's always public lynching if that's what you're after, but we've kind of decided that is not a good idea in modern society

They could be imprisoned.

Really unclear how knowingly creating a scenario where people die of overdosing for profit isn't criminal.

Because car manufacturers exist, and this isn't theoretical or a jab at cars themselves. We are 100% certain that people will die while using cars, and by cars. Vehicular manslaughter even has a high bar for real punishment precisely because driving a car has an inherent risk of killing others and that risk is legal to take on.

Knowing that some people using your product will die, and even that selling more of your product increases the deaths is something we're okay with. It's true of guns, red meat, skateboards, alcohol, lawn mowers, and industrial equipment — all sold for profit.

I very much dislike cases like this because while yes, opioids were overprescribed and Purdue sales people did go out and sell often times not in legal ways, doctors still prescribed them and we knew that people dying was necessarily an outcome. So while the crime they actually committed was about kickbacks, not doing the DEAs job enough for them, and lying with statistics they get blamed for the actual deaths which is silly. I take stimulants that double my risk of heart attack and are also known to be addictive, neither outcome is the maker's fault if those happen. It's the tobacco settlement all over again where when bad thing happens the proximate deepest pockets get blamed. I couldn't care less about the government taking money from rich people because reasons, have at it, but I think they're the scapegoat.

Except Purdue clearly stated that addiction was not an issue with their product. Car manufactures never say that death is no longer possible with their product. They blatantly misrepresented the dangers of their product in ways none of the other examples you listed come close.

They didn't though, they cited a medical journal article where an unaffiliated doctor reported the extremely low addiction rate. Which was true and misleading because short term opioid use addiction rates don't predict long term addiction rates — lying with statistics. And they should be charged and convicted for this, in fact they already were. However, since 2001 every bottle of oxy has made no claim that it's less addictive than other opioids. And we still prescribed them like candy.

> And we still prescribed them like candy.

Part of the claim is that the Sacklers were involved in this portion.

Isn't that a form of punishment instead of retribution?

Jail. Jail would be reasonable for purposefully poisoning tens of millions of people.

Point of order.

Jail is for people not convicted of crimes.

Prison is for convicts.

To those in jail, I doubt it matters

But a scorched earth destruction of their assets would be an appropriate end result.

We don't put killers in prison because 10 years will make the dead person alive again.

We do it because we don't like them.

We actually do it because they're a danger and people tend to age out of criminal impulses.

If there was zero risk of recidivism, we still would.

Matt Levine wrote again today, this time about the decision that just came out:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue...

He quotes and explains parts of both the majority and dissenting opinions.

It was closely submitted, but didn't win the votes (4 points, 7 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40813446

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