Sackler family offers up more money for Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

The Sackler family is offering more money to settle the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case, the mediator of the settlement reported on Friday.

The mediator filed a third interim report on Friday in which the Sackler families proposed paying between $5.5 million and $6 million for the settlement. The original bankruptcy settlement was listed at $4.3 million.

The mediator, former Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, asked that the parties of the settlement receive more time to work on the settlement proposal. 

“A number of Mediation Parties and Additional Parties have requested that the Mediator continue working with the Mediation Parties and the Additional Parties, either to achieve unanimous acceptance of the Sackler Settlement Proposal and/or, in parallel, to explore other settlement structures not dependent on unanimous support,” Chapman wrote. “Especially in light of the issues that remain unresolved, the Mediator is willing to do so, and thus respectfully requests a further extension.”

Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain agreed to the extension, saying in a court filing on Friday that “the progress made to date in reaching an agreement that would result in such substantial additional consideration clearly warrants the requested extension.” 

Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 in an attempt to settle about 3,000 lawsuits from states, tribes and other local entities related to the company’s aggressive opioid marketing that they argue contributed to the opioid crisis that has killed nearly 500,000 people over the past 20 years.

The settlement plan would permanently shield members of the Sackler family and hundreds of their associates from future opioid lawsuits.

A spokesperson for the Mortimer Sackler family told The Hill that they did not have any comment beyond the contents of the mediator’s report. The Sacklers themselves are not the subject of the bankruptcy proceedings.

An advocate for national addiction recovery, Ryan Hampton, told The Associated Press that it did not look like the latest proposal would provide additional money to those affected by the opioid crisis.

The Hill has reached out to representatives of the Raymond Sackler family and Purdue Pharma for comment.