Purdue Pharma’s $7B opioid settlement could advance soon after states back it

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Purdue Pharma’s $7B opioid settlement could advance soon after states back it

2025-06-19 02:45 Last Updated At：02:51

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma ’s latest plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids could soon move forward after every U.S. state involved agreed to it.

A judge on Wednesday said he planned to issue a ruling on Friday on a plan for local governments and individual victims to vote on it.

Government entities, emergency room doctors, insurers, families of children born into withdrawal from the powerful prescription painkiller, individual victims and their families and others would have until Sept. 30 to vote on whether to accept the deal, which calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years.

The settlement is a way to avoid trials with claims from states alone that total more than $2 trillion in damages. Thousands of local governments and other groups have also sued Purdue.

Every state but Oklahoma is involved in the case. Oklahoma reached a separate settlement with Purdue in 2019.

If approved, the settlement would be among the largest in a wave of lawsuits over the past decade as governments and others sought to hold drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies accountable for the opioid epidemic that started rising in the years after OxyContin hit the market in 1996. The other settlements together are worth about $50 billion, and most of the money is to be used to combat the crisis.

In the early 2000s, most opioid deaths were linked to prescription drugs, including OxyContin. Since then, heroin and then illicitly produced fentanyl became the biggest killers. In some years, the class of drugs was linked to more than 80,000 deaths, but that number dropped sharply last year.

The request of U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane comes about a year after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a previous version of Purdue’s proposed settlement. The court found it was improper that the earlier iteration would have protected members of the Sackler family from lawsuits over opioids, even though they themselves were not filing for bankruptcy protection.

Under the reworked plan hammered out with lawyers for state and local governments and others, groups that don’t opt in to the settlement would still have the right to sue members of the wealthy family whose name once adorned museum galleries around the world and programs at several prestigious U.S. universities.

Under the plan, the Sackler family members would give up ownership of Purdue. They resigned from the company’s board and stopped receiving distributions from its funds before the company’s initial bankruptcy filing in 2019. The remaining entity would get a new name, and its profits would be dedicated to battling the epidemic.

Most of the money would go to state and local governments to address the nation’s addiction and overdose crisis, but potentially more than $850 million would go directly to individual victims. That makes it different from the other major settlements.

The payouts would not begin until after a hearing scheduled for Nov. 10, during which Lane is to be asked to approve the entire plan if enough of the affected parties agree.

This story has been corrected to show that 49 states have agreed to the deal, not 50. Oklahoma is not involved because it reached a separate settlement previously.

Anti-ICE protesters assemble across the US after shootings in Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Thousands of people marched in Minneapolis Saturday to protest the fatal shooting of a woman by a federal immigration officer there and the shooting of two protesters in Portland, Oregon, as Minnesota leaders urged demonstrators to remain peaceful.

The Minneapolis gathering was one of hundreds of protests planned in towns and cities across the country over the weekend. It came in a city on edge since the killing of Renee Good on Wednesday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

“We’re all living in fear right now,” said Meghan Moore, a mother of two from Minneapolis who joined the protest Saturday. “ICE is creating an environment where nobody feels safe and that’s unacceptable.”

On Friday night, a protest outside a Minneapolis hotel that attracted about 1,000 people turned violent as demonstrators threw ice, snow and rocks at officers, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Saturday. One officer suffered minor injuries after being struck with a piece of ice, O’Hara said. Twenty-nine people were cited and released, he said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stressed that while most protests have been peaceful, those who cause damage to property or put others in danger will be arrested. He faulted “agitators that are trying to rile up large crowds.”

“This is what Donald Trump wants,” Frey said of the president who has demanded massive immigration enforcement efforts in several U.S. cities. “He wants us to take the bait.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz echoed the call for peace.

“Trump sent thousands of armed federal officers into our state, and it took just one day for them to kill someone,” Walz posted on social media. “Now he wants nothing more than to see chaos distract from that horrific action. Don’t give him what he wants.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities is its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation. Trump's administration has said both shootings were acts of self-defense against drivers who “weaponized” their vehicles to attack officers.

Connor Maloney said he was attending the Minneapolis protest to support his community and because he's frustrated with the immigration crackdown.

“Almost daily I see them harassing people,” he said. “It’s just sickening that it’s happening in our community around us.”

Steven Eubanks, 51, said he felt compelled to attend a protest in Durham, North Carolina, on Saturday because of the “horrifying” killing of Good in Minneapolis.

“We can’t allow it,” Eubanks said. “We have to stand up.”

Indivisible, a social movement organization that formed to resist the Trump administration, said hundreds of protests were scheduled in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida and other states.

In Minneapolis, a coalition of migrant rights groups organized the demonstration that began in a park about half a mile from the residential neighborhood where the 37-year-old Good was shot on Wednesday. Marchers carried signs calling for ICE to leave and voiced support for Good and immigrants.

A couple of miles away, just as the demonstration began, an Associated Press photographer witnessed heavily armed officers — at least one in Border Patrol uniform — approach a person who had been following them. Two of the agents had long guns out when they ordered the person to stop following them, telling him it was his “first and final warning.”

The agents eventually drove onto the interstate without detaining the driver.

Protests held in the neighborhood have been largely peaceful, in contrast to the violence that hit Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Near the airport, some confrontations erupted on Thursday and Friday between smaller groups of protesters and officers guarding the federal building used as a base for the Twin Cities crackdown.

O’Hara said city police officers have responded to calls about cars abandoned because their drivers have been apprehended by immigration enforcement. In one case, the car was left in park and in another case a dog was left in the vehicle.

He said immigration enforcement activities are happening “all over the city” and that 911 callers have been alerting authorities to ICE activity, arrests and abandoned vehicles.

The Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal officers to Minnesota under a sweeping new crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. More than 2,000 officers were taking part.

Some officers moved in after abruptly pulling out of Louisiana, where they were part of another operation that started last month and was expected to last until February.

Three congresswomen from Minnesota attempted to tour the ICE facility in the Minneapolis federal building on Saturday morning and were initially allowed to enter but then told they had to leave about 10 minutes later.

U.S, Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kelly Morrison and Angie Craig accused ICE agents of obstructing members of Congress from fulfilling their duty to oversee operations there.

“They do not care that they are violating federal law,” Craig said after being turned away.

A federal judge last month temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing policies that limit congressional visits to immigration facilities. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by 12 members of Congress who sued in Washington, D.C. to challenge ICE’s amended visitor policies after they were denied entry to detention facilities.

Associated Press writers Allen Breed in Durham, North Carolina, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed.