At the beginning of September, Federal Judge Robert Drain signed off on a bankruptcy settlement that would give the Sackler family immunity from any liability litigation in perpetuity. The family behind Purdue Pharma, which produces OxyContin, had been spending all of the legal fees on getting such a deal as it protects the many billions the family has made for being the financial beneficiaries of an opioid crisis that they helped to create and promote over the last couple of decades. The deal also includes the Sackler family paying out about $4.3 billion of the tens of billions they are estimated to have made off of OxyContin. Conservative estimates of the financial costs  of the opioid epidemic are more than a quarter trillion dollars.

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed a motion to block the implementation of this settlement. NPR reports that the attempt by the Justice Department “signaled they are concerned some provisions of the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan might be implemented quickly, complicating an appeal.” And while many of the 21 states who have been fighting for a better settlement the last couple of years have relented due to the financial resources the Sackler family has that allows it to draw out an expensive legal battle, Connecticut, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Washington State still plan on filing appeals.

U.S. Trustee William Harrington argued that the block was needed because his department believes a higher court will overturn the settlement on appeal. According to the The Wall Street Journal, Harrington “is advancing several legal arguments to overturn the deal, including that the settlement is unconstitutional because it effectively deprives people of their right to take the Sacklers to court.” Harrington himself wrote: “The Sackler family’s attempt to hold [Purdue’s] reorganization hostage unless the non-debtor releases are imposed does not justify taking third parties’ property … without their consent, adequate notice, or any opportunity to be heard.”

Drain’s September ruling wasn’t as much of a surprise as it was a profound disappointment. In June, Drain pushed the deal forward past objections concerning the wide-ranging reach of the immunity clauses the Sacklers’ lawyers were maneuvering for. The extent of the immunity granted could spread through to dozens of family members, hundreds of financial trusts, companies, consultants, and other “entities associated with the Sacklers.” 

Earlier this week, Drain defended his decision, saying: “I did not become a judge to get things wrong. I’ve tried as hard as I can throughout my 28-year career to get things right.” Unfortunately, Drain seems to have failed in his 11th hour. Now, the Justice Department hopes that the judge will at least pause his decision while an appeal is mounted. 

At the time, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson released a statement saying: “This order lets the Sacklers off the hook by granting them permanent immunity from lawsuits in exchange for a fraction of the profits they made from the opioid epidemic — and sends a message that billionaires operate by a different set of rules than everybody else. This order is insulting to victims of the opioid epidemic who had no voice in these proceedings — and must be appealed.” He also cited an opinion piece in The New York Times by the man who wrote Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Radden Keefe:

Over the past couple of years, the Sacklers have offered a sliding scale of billions and billions of dollars, each time pleading their innocence and demanding immunity from any further possible lawsuits that may come their way. Whether they have offered $10 billion or $18 billion, it has never included more than $4 billion of the Sackler family’s actual wealth. It has been very clear from the outset that the move into bankruptcy court for Purdue Pharma was made in order to limit the family’s liability and protect the wealth they have created off of millions of people’s misery. To put things into perspective, back in October 2019, Virginia doctor Joel Smithers was sentenced to 40 years and fined $86,000 for reportedly prescribing “more than half a million doses of oxycodone, hydromorphone, fentanyl and other opioids to patients for years.”

The Sackler family has not faced any justice even remotely like what was handed down to Smithers. The closest the company ever came was pleading guilty to “criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction and its potential to be abused,” and paying out around $600 million in fines back in 2007. The entire reason why OxyContin became such a raging success for Purdue was the false claim that it wasn’t addictive or habit-forming. The promise that OxyContin’s slow-release technology meant longer pain relief while lowering the threat of most powerful narcotics’ issues of addiction and abuse meant big money fast for the Sacklers.

By many accounts, the Sackler family’s psychological welfare is tied up with believing that they aren’t drug dealers who have exploited the need for pain relief to make billions while killing hundreds of thousands of people, and ruining the lives of millions more. Kathe Sackler reportedly told a class-action lawyer during a deposition that OxyContin is “a very good medicine and it’s a very effective and safe medicine.” This kind of self-serving delusion mirrors the denying and lying of the lawmakers in the Sackler family pocket, like perennially concerned Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Related: Doctor sentenced to 40 years for writing over 500,000 opioid prescriptions in less than 2 years

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Related: The Sackler family made billions off OxyContin, and a new ruling means they’ll probably keep it