Purdue Pharma to be dissolved as judge approves criminal sentence in opioid case

“We still deserve justice,” she said. “And this isn’t it.”

Family members of opiod overdose victims protest outside the US district court for the district of New Jersey in Newark on 28 April 2026. Photograph: Aron Ranen/AFP/Getty Images

More than 54,000 people with personal injury claims voted to accept the settlement; about 200 said no.

Michele Wagner, whose son died of an overdose, said outside the courthouse last week that she wanted to see Sackler family members who own Purdue criminally charged. “Justice to me looks like more than just money,” she said.

Kara Trainor, who is in recovery from an addiction that began with an OxyContin prescription in 2002 and served on a committee involved in the settlement talks, wants the sentence approved because she believes that it can lead to closure.

“For me to be the best version of myself in my own recovery, I had to start healing and gravitate away from the anger I felt,” she said. “The anger itself was poisonous to me. It was destroying my mental health.”

Sackler family members to pay up to $7bn

The settlement, which Purdue says could take effect as soon as Friday, calls for members of the Sackler family, who own the company, to contribute up to $7bn over 15 years. Most of the money is to go to government entities to use to fight the opioid crisis.

Early in Tuesday’s hearing, Arleo asked lawyers why Sackler family members were being allowed to pay over 15 years. She was told it was because they had to sell other businesses to secure the cash.

The judge offered a different reason. “They’d rather pay it from future money than pay it now,” she said.

A Purdue lawyer said most of the lawsuits against the company over opioids did not include specific financial claims. But the ones in those that did totalled over $40tn in damages.

The settlement is among the largest in a series of settlements by drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies in recent years – and the only major one that includes payments for some individual victims or their survivors.

Payments to individual victims are expected to range from about $8,000 to about $16,000.

Overall, the settlements are worth more than $50bn, and most of the money is to be used to address the overdose epidemic.

Under the Purdue deal, members of the Sackler family will be shielded from lawsuits over opioids from those who agree to the payments. Family members received payments from the company totalling about $10.7bn from 2008 through 2018, but said nearly half that amount was used to pay taxes on behalf of the business.

As part of the settlement, Purdue itself will cease to exist and be replaced by a new company, Knoa Pharma, with a board appointed by the states and an aim of combating the opioid crisis. Millions of internal Purdue documents are to be made public.

Members of the Sackler family also have agreed not to object if their names are taken off museums and other institutions they’ve supported.