OxyContin maker's lawyer warns of long, expensive litigation

A lawyer for Purdue Pharma says the company's settlement plan is the only way to avoid long and expensive litigation

A lawyer for Purdue Pharma said Monday that a judge needs to accept the OxyContin maker's plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the opioid epidemic or face “years or decades of Hobbesian hell” with complicated litigation that would not result in fair payouts to abate the epidemic or pay individual victims. Marshall Huebner, a lawyer for Purdue, made his case during an ongoing videoconference hearing to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who expects to rule this week on whether to accept the Stamford, Connecticut-based company's reorganization plan. State and local governments and individual victims who cast ballots on the plan supported it overwhelmingly. But nine states, the District of Columbia, the city of Seattle and the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee are fighting the plan because it would protect members of the Sackler family who own the company from future lawsuits over opioids. Huebner said that allowing suits to go ahead against members of the wealthy family "would be a fight that would be long, hard-fought, uncertain and incredibly expensive.”