A federal judge on Thursday evening unraveled a painstakingly negotiated settlement between Purdue Pharma and thousands of state, local and tribal governments who had sued the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin for its role in the ongoing opioid epidemic, saying that the plan was flawed in one critical area: because it released the company’s owners, members of the billionaire Sackler family, from liability in civil opioids cases. The bankruptcy code does not explicitly permit a judge to grant such releases. “The great unsettled question in this case is whether the bankruptcy court — or any court — is statutorily authorized to grant such releases,” she wrote. REFERENCE https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/health/purdue-pharma-opioid-settlement.html
