Members of the Sackler family, some of whom own the the company Purdue Pharma – and whose name once adorned several museums and galleries in both the US and the UK as a consequence of their extensive arts patronage – have negotiated a legal deal which would see them given personal immunity from past and present civil lawsuits over the the marketing of prescription opioids.
Purdue Pharma is the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, which public health officials have linked to the US’s opioid epidemic. Opioids have been involved in more than 500,000 overdose deaths in the US over the last two decades.
In the legal settlement negotiated between Purdue Pharma and fifteen American states, in return for the release from further personal legal action, the family will pay $4.5 billion, up from the $3bn originally offered, and the company will undergo a bankruptcy restructure making it a non-profit outfit. It will also release millions of internal company documents that are likely to pave the way for a resolution of thousands of individual legal claims.
Independent trustees will take over the Sackler’s charitable arts trusts, which are worth approximately $175m, with the money redirected to tackling opioid addiction. The deal also bars the Sackler family from seeking naming rights on museums or other public institutions until the debt is paid off, which they have a further nine years to do so.
Among the institutions the Sacklers were major donors to are the Guggenheim, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Serpentine and South London Gallery in London. Many of the institutions have since either returned the money or removed the family’s name from their galleries and buildings.
Reacting to the deal, the artist Nan Goldin, who herself became addicted to OxyContin, and has since been a vocal activist for the cause, said the deal did not go far enough: ‘Another appalling outcome is the issue of the Sackler name being emblazoned on all their favorite museums and universities. The charitable donations will not include their name until they’ve paid their debt in full. That means we’ve tarnished their legacy, but only for a decade.’
