According to insiders, the US pharmaceutical company Purdue and its owner family Sackler are negotiating a billion-dollar settlement to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits over controversial opioid analgesics. It's about a total of ten to twelve billion dollars, said two familiar with the matter Reuters news agency. There is no agreement so far, the talks could still fail.
It would be the highest ever total in the context of the rampant in the US wave of opioid dependence. Opioids are partly synthetic drugs (such as Oxycontin) with, among other things, analgesic properties.
The news agency Bloomberg reported that the owner family Sackler had agreed with the authorities on a package in the volume of more than $ 11 billion. The company will be sent into bankruptcy and transferred to a public-sector foundation. In addition, the outside of the United States active daughter Mundipharma will be sold.
Purdue would miss most of the lawsuits
The family Sackler, which has owned the manufacturer since the early 1950s, should pay three billion dollars. This should bring together around $ 11.5 billion for the compensation of victims of the painkiller wave. In return, about 2,000 complaints will be dropped by cities, districts and states. That would be a large part of the current proceedings against Purdue.
The Oxycontin manufacturer and other companies are accused of having played down the risks of addictive painkillers during prolonged use in aggressive marketing campaigns. The company and the Sackler family reject this. According to authorities, between 1999 and 2017, nearly 400,000 people in the US died from the effects of opioid abuse.
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On Monday, a court convicted pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson (J & J) of paying $ 572 million for unlawful commercialization of addictive painkillers. The group had contributed to the wave of drug dependence in the state of Oklahoma, it said in the statement.
Johnson & Johnson immediately announced that it would appeal the decision. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter accused the corporation of being a pioneer in the opioid wave and drug crisis with addictive analgesics.
Johnson & Johnson was accused in the lawsuit of veiling addiction risk in marketing the drugs due to misrepresentation. Oklahoma prosecutor Hunter had demanded an even higher fine of over $ 17 billion.
