Family that owns manufacturer of OxyContin faces hundreds of lawsuits across the country over alleged role in opioid crisis

Members of the Sackler family that own the manufacturer of OxyContin, the prescription painkiller largely blamed for the opioids crisis, have asked a court to dismiss the most high-profile lawsuit against them – and on Tuesday declared that they feel “deep and profound compassion for people who are struggling with addiction”.

The eight prominent members of the multibillionaire family are being sued in several large civil cases brought by hundreds of US cities, counties and states, accusing them of pushing aggressive sales of the drug while knowingly downplaying its dangers. On Monday night they filed a motion to dismiss the suit brought against them by Massachusetts.

New York sues billionaire Sackler family over alleged role in opioid crisis Read more

The company they own, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, the most well-known brand of opioid pill, previously asked the court in Boston to toss out the suit in which it is also named.

The family accused Massachusetts of “completely fabricating” some accusations “out of whole cloth”, relying on allegations “rife with mischaracterizations and factual inaccuracies” and failing to show how any of the individuals being sued had broken the law.

“It’s hard to justify the inaccuracies. You’re entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts,” said an attorney for the members of the Sackler family sued in the Massachusetts civil case.

The Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, sued Purdue and several other pharmaceutical companies last year and also named the eight Sacklers. They face a host of other investigations.

In one of the most vivid accusations unveiled in Massachusetts when several documents were made public this January, the suit states that OxyContin “became one of the deadliest drugs of all time” and that at the pill’s launch party, Richard Sackler, who was then a senior executive, spoke of a “blizzard of prescriptions” for the potent painkiller that would “bury the competition”.

That evocative image inspired a protest shortly afterwards at the Guggenheim art museum in New York where activists dropped thousands of fake prescriptions into the atrium, mimicking the alleged “blizzard”, and hanging banners slamming the museum for taking philanthropy from the Sacklers. The Guggenheim and two of the leading art museums in the UK announced last month that they would no longer accept donations from the family.

But this week’s motion by the Sacklers to dismiss the case decried what it called Massachusetts’s “relentless but baseless attempt to condemn Richard Sackler”, accusing the suit of “plucking misleading snippets” from emails and documents, the filing states.

Sackler family members face mass litigation and criminal investigations over opioids crisis Read more

The eight Sackler members named in the Massachusetts case and several other suits, include Beverly and Theresa, widows of the two brothers, Raymond and Mortimer, who built Purdue into a pharmaceutical giant and launched OxyContin as a breakthrough, controlled-release prescription narcotic in 1996. The others are the founders’ children, Richard, Jonathan, Mortimer David Alfons, Kathe Sackler and Ilene Lefcort Sackler, and grandson David Sackler.

“Not a single document shows an individual director engaging in any unlawful conduct regarding the sale of prescription opioids or ordering anyone else to do so,” the defense motion stated.

The branches of the family related to Raymond and Mortimer, some of whose members live in the UK, are collectively worth an estimated $13bn.

The Sacklers’ attorney, who had requested not to be named, speaking for the family on Tuesday, said that the Sacklers will “defend themselves” at trial if necessary, in the many lawsuits. That includes litigation grouping more than 1,400 US cities and counties in a federal court case in Cleveland, Ohio. But that “their preference is to find solutions that deliver resources to people on the ground”.

“The family feels deep and profound compassion for people who are struggling with addiction,” the attorney said.

Last month the Sacklers made an unprecedented $75m voluntary payment towards an addiction treatment center, as part of a $270m settlement by Purdue to end a case brought against the company, but not the Sacklers, by Oklahoma, without admitting culpability.

“They want to be known as people who were less interested in a blame game and more interested in contributing, it’s been a longstanding ethos to give back to the community,” the attorney said.

Earlier on Tuesday, a different attorney representing the family members, David Bernick, told ABC’s Good Morning America: “The Sackler family deeply feels the sorrow and the pain that this opioids epidemic has inflicted on people and their families. They very much want to help and they very much wanted to help since the opioids crisis began 20 years ago.”

But a federal case brought in New York by more than 500 cities and counties alleges that: “This nation is facing an unprecedented opioid addiction epidemic that was initiated and perpetuated by the Sackler defendants for their own financial gain.”