Opioid victims will have a voice in the bankruptcy of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma. By CarlaKJohnson geoffmulvihill.
FILE - In this Tuesday, June 19, 2018 file photo Cheryl Juaire walks past a photo of her son, Corey Merrill, at her home in Marlborough, Mass. Victims of opioid addiction weren’t in the room when big decisions were hammered out in OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s proposal to settle claims over its role in the U.S. opioid crisis. Cheryl Juaire lost her 23-year-old son to a heroin overdose after he became addicted to prescription painkillers.
The four are a mother and a grandfather of children born dependent on opioids, a man in recovery from addiction and a mother who lost a son to overdose. Together, they could be an emotionally persuasive minority on the nine-member Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors appointed by the U.S. trustee overseeing the bankruptcy.
Opioids, including prescription drugs and illegal ones such as heroin and illicitly made fentanyl, have been linked to more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000. Thousands of infants have been born to mothers who were taking opioids while pregnant, and two committee members represent those children.
McDaid said “it will be a win” if the bankruptcy leads to investments in addiction treatment infrastructure and support for people in recovery such as housing and education “so people can get and stay well.” “The public litigants have dominated the press for the past year or so ... and there has been less press regarding the private litigants — and perhaps an inclination to discount the size and importance of those claims. Doing so, however, would be unfair, and contrary to the facts,” the committee’s attorneys wrote. “Collectively, the amount of the private litigants’ claims is vast — just like the public litigants.
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