A Sweetheart Deal for the Sacklers: Billionaires Get Immunity from Civil Lawsuits over Opioid Crisis

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman this week a federal appeals court ruled members of the Sackler family the billionaire owners of Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma can receive complete immunity from all current and future civil litigation related to their role in creating and fueling the opioid epidemic The Legal Shield could lead to a settlement in the range of 6 billion dollars for thousands of plaintiffs including States local governments and tribes Tuesday's ruling reverses a 2021 Court decision that did not protect Sackler family members from liability as part of Purdue pharma's bankruptcy declaration the case can still be appealed to the U.S Supreme Court opioid overdoses have killed over half a million people in the United States over the past 20 years this according to the CDC including prescription and illicit drugs for more we're joined by two guests Ed Bish is 18 year old son Eddie died of an oxycontin related overdose in 2001. he was 18. Ed Bish founded rap that's relatives against Purdue Pharma he wrote an essay for stat news titled my son died of an oxy overdose Drug Company execs who are responsible should be sent to jail Ed Bish has long called on the Department of Justice to prosecute the sacklers and in Mexico City Christopher glazick joins us investigative reporter who is the first to publicly report how the Sackler family had significantly profited from selling the opioid Oxycontin while fully aware that the highly addictive drug was directly fueling the opioid epidemic in America we welcome you both to democracy Now Ed Bish let's begin with you if you can talk about why you oppose this court decision this week what it means for you and your family um well why what it means is it the best part of this deal is it doesn't has nothing to do with criminal prosecution so for that I am happy otherwise that is in my opinion the only good part of this deal there's a many reasons uh most of the news stories are saying that 95 percent of the victims approved of the deal while only 20 percent of the victims voted so you know that's very misleading I mean I I have a long list number one the the total deals valued about 10 billion the victims get 750 million okay that's 7.5 percent out of that that's before the lawyer fees and expenses so the victims are going to wind up with around four percent does that sound fair to you what does that come to per person Ed well they that's another thing they have a point system so and you need valid records so I talked to one lady who actually got addicted to Oxycontin went to prison for forging Oxycontin prescriptions to feed her own addiction went to prison she filed and the lawyer said well we we need proof she said I went to jail for two years what kind of proof do you they won a lot of records and some of them go back a lot of people couldn't get the records there's a lot of people who are going to be very disappointed and please follow up with these people in a year or two and just to be clear um you've been calling for the prosecution of the Sackler family this Court ruled they get total immunity your response to that well they get civil immunity they don't get criminal immunity Mark Healey the Massachusetts governor has stated she has seen the evidence and the doj should do their job and prosecute punishable by fine means legal for a price just you know these companies not just Purdue they look at it as the course they're doing business they made billions and billions they pay a portion in a fine and they walk away in this case the sacklers get to walk away with civil immunity they get to sleep like a baby at night they're still billionaires without any criminal prosecutions this is going to go on and on I want to bring Christopher glazick into this conversation you have been covering this for decades just as Ed Bish has been living the horror of losing his son for over 20 years now he lost him in 20 2001. um can you talk about this latest deal how it differs from previous ones and the overall scope of it Chris yeah I you know looking at the agreement you'd have to say that the sacklers did what they've always done they struck a deal they paid a bribe and they're getting away with it there's no admission of wrongdoing anywhere in the agreement and the question is is this really accountability it's really important for people to understand the deal has this big fancy number in it like the sacklers are going to pay 6 billion well they're going to pay that over 18 years and when you have a giant Fortune that's more than 10 billion dollars just the interest you earn every year is going to be enough to pay out that settlement so it's important people to understand the sacklers are not losing their fortune in fact their Fortune will probably be bigger in five years than it was five years ago so you know there's a real question whether there's any accountability here in reality um you know wait a second wait wait I want to follow up I want to follow up on what you just said you're saying that their profits will grow what do you mean I'm saying when you have a fortune that's more than 11 billion dollars you know just from your Investments alone from interest even if you bought you know t-bills you know treasury bills from the federal government you're earning so much money every year from your Investments and so it's not like the sacklers are going to send a wire over tomorrow for six billion dollars they have 18 years to pay a lot of the money that means that the the impact on that on their day-to-day lives on the number of dollars in their bank account is way way way smaller than it first appears in 2019 and in literal dollar terms go ahead no go ahead Chris Oh no just you know in literal dollar terms their Fortune is not going to shrink and it probably will will will grow even larger and so you know when we ask the question have the sacklers paid uh you know is is this a big judgment for them is this going to change their lives the answer is is probably not and then the question becomes how did they get such a sweetheart deal um and you know there's a couple things to say about that the first you know the original judge in this case was hand-picked by the sacklers they did this crazy legal maneuver where they changed their headquarters at the last minute to White Plains New York because there was only one bankruptcy judge in that district and uh and then that judge ended up being very favorable for the sacklers he announced during the case it would be his last case ever he was retiring and then since retiring he got a job with one of the law firms representing the sacklers that's number one number two and this is really important for people to understand the sacklers had a giant Fortune most of which is held in off offshore accounts a lot of it's in the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel and it is beyond the reach of U.S government prosecutors so the the sacklers said in the court case they made the argument hey if you don't take this deal it doesn't matter what judgment you get against us in the future maybe a court will award you 30 billion dollars you're not going to get a cent because all the money is offshore and you can't get at it so the sacklers had this really big leverage in the negotiation which was that their money was protected U.S Regulators could not get at their money and for that reason they said hey if you don't take this deal you're going to get nothing those two things are really important to to to point out yeah in two seconds you know and then the other thing which go ahead go ahead well and then the third thing you know how did this deal come come about you know they they use this kind of Novel legal procedure to uh insulate themselves from any future civil prosecution and the reason that it is Raising eyebrows is because they have this company that went bankrupt well they they extracted all the money out of the company so it was really like a shell and then as part of the bankruptcy agreement they said you know you can't ever go after us as if the family had declared bankruptcy because it's normal when you declare bankruptcy you know people can't go after you for civil judgments but in this case the family did not declare bankruptcy and far from being bankrupt they remain among the very richest people in the history of the world and they're going to remain so for for generations to come in 2019 the investigative news organization propublica published video of Dr Richard Sackler of Purdue Pharma the maker of Oxycontin a part of his deposition he gave in 2015 lawsuit in Kentucky we're going to play a clip of the company waged a three-year legal bundle to keep the video secret Sackler was questioned by attorney Tyler Thompson sitting here today After all you've come to learn as a witness do you believe Purdue's conduct in marketing and promoting Oxycontin in Kentucky caused any of the prescription drug addiction problems now plaguing the Commonwealth I don't believe so sitting here today after all you've come to learn as witness do you believe that produce conduct in Kentucky has led to an excessive or unnecessary amount of opioids being located throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky I don't believe so do you believe that any of produced conduct has led to an increase in people being addicted in the Commonwealth of Kentucky Dr Richard Sackler was chairman and president of Purdue Pharma the maker of Oxycontin Ed Bish you lost your son in 2001 at the age of 18 your response to what he says in this testimony that was long concealed I'm glad that it got out it sold a lot light a day a lot more documents are going to see the lawyer today am I surprised not even a little how he sleeps at night I don't know the crimes are well documented Chris has wrote written some great articles um dope sick on Hulu crime in the century on HBO and on August 10th painkiller is going to show on Netflix 2003 the very first book documenting their crimes painkiller was published 2001 was the very first congressional hearing on oxycontin deaths 2001 I went to that hearing and you know I read the headline Purdue go now business oh finally as soon as I start reading it and I saw the sacklers are demanding immunity I said this is a bankruptcy scam and that's one thing this this uh bankruptcy scam has exposed the crazy bankruptcy laws like judge shopping like these third-party releases and I hope it does go to the Supreme Court and they do the right thing will they I have no idea um the only thing that can make up for this travesty is doj do your job follow the evidence Mark Healey says she's seen the evidence she was an attorney general and they should prosecute and so I I pray every night that they do their job Christopher glazick um we're going to do part two of this discussion and posted at democracynow.org but I wanted to ask you about the many organizations that have dropped the Sackler name from buildings like the Guggenheim like the Louvre most recently Oxford University can you talk about the significance of this and also uh you know just the fact that you say their wealth is ever increasing in their offshore accounts yeah well so there's one provision um in the bankruptcy agreement which is quite interesting and important and it says that any institution that has the Sackler name on it can take down the name and the sacklers cannot challenge that even if they had some contract some prior agreement and there you've seen over the last few years in the wake of media coverage and activism there's been this kind of domino effect of first museums and then universities taking down the Sackler name and it was really interesting to see this process play out you know I wrote this piece there are other articles there was a lot of media attention around the sacklers in late 2017 but at first you know I called all these museums and they said we're not doing anything we're not taking this down this isn't our business I called universities you know Yale you know they said no no thank you um and then the activism started and you know there had always been activism but you know Nan golden in particular in the art World conducted a series of really public actions that got a lot of media attention and really hit the sacklers where it hurt and she you know using her own influence in the art world and Gathering all these people together essentially forced a lot of museums to take down the name

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: 3GrTm3umuUw

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023