Washington Will Appeal 'Flawed' Purdue Bankruptcy Plan

OLYMPIA, WA — Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has announced that he will be appealing Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy plan, which his office argues does not require the company to pay nearly enough for its part in driving the opioid epidemic, and grants its owners, the Sackler family, a lifetime legal shield against other complaints.

“This order lets the Sacklers off the hook by granting them permanent immunity from lawsuits in exchange for a fraction of the profits they made from the opioid epidemic — and sends a message that billionaires operate by a different set of rules than everybody else,” Ferguson said in a written statement. “This order is insulting to victims of the opioid epidemic who had no voice in these proceedings — and must be appealed.”

Purdue's bankruptcy plan was approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain Monday. It requires the Sackler family pay $4.3 billion over nine years to a coalition of private plaintiffs, municipalities and states — including Washington — that had sued Purdue Pharma for fueling the opioid epidemic.

Purdue produces OxyContin, and the suit alleges that Purdue deceptively marketed the drug to falsely convince the public that it was effective for treating pain with a low risk of addiction.

Ferguson says Purdue's deceptive marketing helped drive an addiction epidemic that took the lives of 8,000 Washingtonians between 2006 and 2017. At the peak of the opioid epidemic in 2011, Washingtonians had been prescribed a combined 112 million daily doses of opioids — 16 opioids for every person in the state. In 2015, Asotin, Clallam, Grays Harbor, Columbia, Garfield, Pend Orielle, Lewis and Benton Counties had more opioid prescriptions than living people.

If Washington had accepted the bankruptcy plan, its share of the payout would've been around $70 million, received in payments over the next decade. Considering that the Sackler family withdrew nearly $11 billion from Purdue at the height of the opioid crisis, the Attorney Genera's Office says the proposed settlement is inadequate — so inadequate the Sackler family would still likely end up richer by the time they were finished paying it off.

This is not the first time Ferguson has turned down a settlement from an opioid producer: Just this July Ferguson's office rejected a $527 million settlement proposed by defendants McKesson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and Johnson & Johnson.