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The Sacklers were absolved of financial liability, not criminal. A DA that thought there was a strong enough case could have brought charges this whole time irr

The Sacklers were absolved of financial liability, not criminal. A DA that thought there was a strong enough case could have brought charges this whole time irrespective of the settlement agreement. > Their foundation should be dismantled and used to fund damage and mental health services for addicts of the opioid crisis that they went on to create. Part of the settlement agreement was that they were going to turn Purdue into a treatment organization. But right now it's back to the drawing board and plaintiffs will have to pursue separate and much harder cases to get reparations directly from all the individual members of the Sackler family.

saghm 2y ago
> The Sacklers were absolved of financial liability, not criminal I don't understand how this changes anything; why would it make any more sense for the subset of the victims who settled to absolve the Sacklers of financial liability towards to the victims who didn't settle? The type of liability doesn't change the fact that victims not part of the settlement shouldn't be restricted by the terms of it; being able to push their own case separately is the entire reason why people are allowed to opt out of class action settlements.
- legitster 2y ago
  As the dissent pointed out, getting voluntary concessions from parties is generally considered a good outcome in bankruptcy court and part of the reason it exists in the first place. Any time you can take a million lawsuits and turn it into one saves a lot of legal fees for everyone and frees up our court system. Another thing the dissent pointed out is that anyone who doesn't participate in the group settlement is only going to get the money first-come/first-serve. In bankruptcy court you can split the money more or less evenly. If everyone litigates separately, only the people with more senior claims get their money before the funds run out.
7thaccount 2y ago
Last time I looked into things, the fines they were going to pay is a tiny slap on the wrist compared to the obscene money they made. They can put the billions in an account and use just some of the interest for the fines. The biggest hit to them so far was having their name removed from some museums. Let that sink in. They've lost some slight prestige with other wealthy folks.
- legitster 2y ago
  They took in something like $11 billion and were going to fund something like $6 billion. As far as purely pragmatic solutions go this was not a bad deal for victims. There are a lot of members of the Sackler family and a lot of them have a lot of money despite personally not being connected to the Purdue business in any way. Even if they could all be connected to wrongdoing actually getting money from, like, the second step-grand-nephew who lives in Copenhagen is going to be really, really hard.
  - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
    $6 billion dollars is a lot of money, but it's also just half of what they profited from what was effectively mass murder. Is that really something you want to let people buy their way out of for less than they profited?
    - legitster 2y ago
      Think of it this way - if you found out your great-grand-uncle was a Nazi official, and that the house you grew up in or the favorable college you got into or whatever lifestyle you had growing up was initially partly funded by his misdeeds? Could your assets be targeted by descendants of the victims and you personally be made bankrupt? That's a bit of an exaggeration, but a lot of the wealth of the Sackler family is distributed this way. The original brothers have died, there is a huge lump of easily gotten money from the direct family, and then there is a lot of money that has been spread around 2 or 3 generations removed. At a certain point if you want the full $11 billion you are going to have to go into the weeds.
      - lesuorac 2y ago
        I don't think "partly funded by his misdeeds" is an accurate description. Members of the Sackler family ran Perdue Pharma and they aren't dead. Sure, a relative of the Perdue Pharma executives should be off limit for liability. But there's still plenty of actual executives that should be held accountable.
deleted 2y ago
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saghm 2y ago

> The Sacklers were absolved of financial liability, not criminal I don't understand how this changes anything; why would it make any more sense for the subset of the victims who settled to absolve the Sacklers of financial liability towards to the victims who didn't settle? The type of liability doesn't change the fact that victims not part of the settlement shouldn't be restricted by the terms of it; being able to push their own case separately is the entire reason why people are allowed to opt out of class action settlements.

legitster 2y ago
As the dissent pointed out, getting voluntary concessions from parties is generally considered a good outcome in bankruptcy court and part of the reason it exists in the first place. Any time you can take a million lawsuits and turn it into one saves a lot of legal fees for everyone and frees up our court system. Another thing the dissent pointed out is that anyone who doesn't participate in the group settlement is only going to get the money first-come/first-serve. In bankruptcy court you can split the money more or less evenly. If everyone litigates separately, only the people with more senior claims get their money before the funds run out.

7thaccount 2y ago

Last time I looked into things, the fines they were going to pay is a tiny slap on the wrist compared to the obscene money they made. They can put the billions in an account and use just some of the interest for the fines. The biggest hit to them so far was having their name removed from some museums. Let that sink in. They've lost some slight prestige with other wealthy folks.

legitster 2y ago
They took in something like $11 billion and were going to fund something like $6 billion. As far as purely pragmatic solutions go this was not a bad deal for victims. There are a lot of members of the Sackler family and a lot of them have a lot of money despite personally not being connected to the Purdue business in any way. Even if they could all be connected to wrongdoing actually getting money from, like, the second step-grand-nephew who lives in Copenhagen is going to be really, really hard.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  $6 billion dollars is a lot of money, but it's also just half of what they profited from what was effectively mass murder. Is that really something you want to let people buy their way out of for less than they profited?
  - legitster 2y ago
    Think of it this way - if you found out your great-grand-uncle was a Nazi official, and that the house you grew up in or the favorable college you got into or whatever lifestyle you had growing up was initially partly funded by his misdeeds? Could your assets be targeted by descendants of the victims and you personally be made bankrupt? That's a bit of an exaggeration, but a lot of the wealth of the Sackler family is distributed this way. The original brothers have died, there is a huge lump of easily gotten money from the direct family, and then there is a lot of money that has been spread around 2 or 3 generations removed. At a certain point if you want the full $11 billion you are going to have to go into the weeds.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      I don't think "partly funded by his misdeeds" is an accurate description. Members of the Sackler family ran Perdue Pharma and they aren't dead. Sure, a relative of the Perdue Pharma executives should be off limit for liability. But there's still plenty of actual executives that should be held accountable.

deleted 2y ago

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