Purdue’s Sacklers offer to increase contribution in new opioid settlement, WSJ reports

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(Reuters) -The Sackler family owners of Purdue Pharma are offering to increase their financial contribution to a bankruptcy settlement of opioid lawsuits, while agreeing to some exposure to future litigation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Some family members who own the OxyContin maker have agreed to raise their total contribution to the settlement to about $6.5 billion from $6 billion under a previous plan, the Journal reported, citing people with knowledge of confidential mediation discussions.

Purdue Pharma, along with the members of the wealthy Sackler family, is at the center of thousands of lawsuits filed by state and local governments, alleging the company fueled a deadly opioid-addiction crisis in the U.S. through deceptive marketing of its pain medication, OxyContin.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based company declined to comment on specifics of a potential settlement, citing the confidentiality agreement imposed by the court for the mediation process.

“We are currently engaged with our creditors in a productive mediation to achieve a plan that maximizes the value for opioid abatement and enables the company to emerge from bankruptcy as an engine for good,” Purdue said in a statement to Reuters.

Over the past twenty years, the opioid crisis in the United States has resulted in more than 500,000 people succumbing to overdoses.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement of up to $6 billion, which would have shielded Sackler family members from lawsuits over their role in the opioid epidemic.

Representatives for the Sackler family declined to comment, saying that settlement talks were still confidential.

The proposed settlement would provide compensation to all claimants from Purdue, the newspaper reported. Additionally, the Sackler family would offer a separate settlement in exchange for the claimants releasing all opioid-related claims against family members.

Claimants who opt out of the settlement would still have the option to pursue litigation against the Sacklers if they choose to do so, the report added.

(Reporting by Rhea Rose Abraham in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Dietrich Knauth and Sneha S K; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Bill Berkrot)