Massachusetts is one of 15 states that will be settling in the case against the Sacklers, the family behind Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma. The settlement will result in a public document repository of internal company records and communications, the dissolution of Purdue Pharma and the family paying out $4.3 billion to all states involved in the case for opioid addiction prevention and treament — of which Massachusetts will receive roughly $90 million.
Mass. Attorney General Maura Healey, the first state attorney general to sue the family, joined Greater Boston to discuss the case's outcome with Jim Braude.
"I'm not happy with this resolution. I'm not happy that billionaires were able to go to bankruptcy court and use the bankruptcy process to shut down our state litigation," she said. "I am proud, though, that my team fought tooth and nail all the way to the end and we were able to achieve this result."
The Raymond and Mortimer Sackler families released a statement saying, “This resolution to the mediation is an important step toward providing substantial resources for people and communities in need. The Sackler family hopes these funds will help achieve that goal.”
With the settlement, Healey said, Purdue Pharma will be wound down and the Sacklers will no longer be able to be in the opioid business. Another key component of the settlement is the airing out of company communications, which she said will provide transparency and peace to the families whose lives have been affected by opioid addiction.
"This first-time-ever public document repository that's going to be set up, that will have every email, memo — including all the attorney-client privileged information that has existed in the company," Healey said. "It will tell the story and lay bare for all to see exactly who knew what, when and who did what, when. And that's an important part, this disclosure, because it brings the transparency that the families have long been seeking, the accountability."
Healey added that she hopes making the documents public will provide a roadmap for Congress to change lobbying laws and so that the Department of Justice can form a new approach to prosecuting such cases. The settlement, alongside a previous settlement that her office made with McKinsey & Company for helping to market opioids, serves as a warning to professional firms who skirt the law, she said.
"My message is — to the professional services firms, law firms, accounting firms, consulting firms — if you're going to do business out there, you better be damn sure you understand what your clients are doing, and you better be damn sure that you are not perpetrating fraud, perpetrating illegality or perpetrating harm in the way that Purdue and the Sacklers, assisted by others, did to the devastation of hundreds of thousands of people around this country," she said.
"We held them to account as best we could in this court," Healey concluded. "They will continue to be held to account in the court of public opinion, and ultimately, I guess, they're going to have to answer to a higher level of justice someday."
WATCH: Maura Healey on the Sackler settlement on Greater Boston
Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly suggested that Attorney General Maura Healey charged the Sackler family when in fact she sued them. GBH News regrets the error.
