Last week, the Supreme Court threw a grenade into years of painstaking negotiations between the family that helped usher in America’s opioid epidemic and thousands of their victims. In a 5-4 opinion, the Court held that a complex settlement worth as much as $6 billion, and agreed to by oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family who once ran it, and a long list of plaintiffs including states, tribes, and individuals, could not stand because the Sacklers had improperly used bankruptcy court to shield themselves from civil liability down the road — a key plank of the deal. For victims who had grudgingly signed on to the settlement in hopes that they’d finally see some compensation for their suffering, the ruling — which means they might never see any money at all — hurt badly. For others, more invested in seeing corporate drug pushers face any kind of personal justice, it was a relief.

The journalist Patrick Radden Keefe introduced many Americans to the Sacklers, first in The New Yorker and then in his book Empire of Pain. He chronicled how members of the insular clan, once pharmaceutical and philanthropic royalty, ruthlessly pushed oxycontin with the help of pliant medical authorities and doctors, opening the door to a public-health crisis that continues to exact a devastating toll across the U.S. And his reporting galvanized a backlash that has all turned much of the family into pariahs. I spoke with Radden Keefe after the ruling came down about the Sacklers’ newfound vulnerability to lawsuits, how their crafty financial maneuvering has helped shield them over the years, and whether they feel any guilt or shame over their role in an epidemic.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Sackler family issued a statement in which they said, “While we are confident that we would prevail in any future litigation given the profound misrepresentations about our families and the opioid crisis, we continue to believe that a swift negotiated agreement to provide billions of dollars for people and communities in need is the best way forward.” Knowing what you know about this family, do you think they’ll agree to anything without the benefit of the liability shield?
I think that’s the big question, and you see a difference of opinion between the Court’s majority opinion and the dissent on just that. The majority, somewhat optimistically, says “Maybe there’s a better deal to be made here” — essentially, that the Sacklers had been prepared to put up $6 billion, but that if you withdraw the shield, they may ultimately increase that figure. So that’s one point of view. There’s another point of view you see in the dissent, which is essentially “We don’t know that.” You had $6 billion on the table. It was going to get paid out quite slowly over 19 years, but even so, that money is desperately needed. One of the issues in this case is that a lot of the Sackler money is offshore. So there’s this question of — how would you actually claw that money back if they for whatever reason decide they don’t want to play ball?

I think the danger they’re facing is a lifetime of litigation. It’s hundreds or even thousands of lawsuits they could be fighting ad hoc forever. And it could go on for the rest of everybody’s lives, which is less appealing for victims and people who could use that money in order to help remediate the damage of the opioid crisis, and also less appealing for the Sacklers. So my sense is that they will all go back to the mediation process and try to come up with a version of the deal, which I think probably will ultimately entail more money coming from the Sacklers and may leave open the idea that in the future there are people who can sue them.

Can the Sacklers maintain absolute immunity from lawsuits now under any circumstance? Or is that totally out the window with this ruling?
Some of........

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