“A Punch in the Gut”: After Years of Waiting, Many Opioid Victims Will Be Shut Out of Purdue Settlement
· ProPublica
Mary Jannotta sliced meat and cheese behind deli counters at Acme and Pathmark supermarkets in the Philadelphia suburbs for decades, developing aches that came with working on her feet. A botched back surgery in 2008 made the pain worse. Her doctor repeatedly prescribed OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s marquee painkiller — the high-dose opioid the company later admitted it criminally marketed and distributed.
Jannotta said she soon became dependent on opioids. Cut off by her doctors, she found her way to Kensington, home of Philadelphia’s dangerous open-air drug market, to score pills. She eventually lost her car, her home — and her grandson. Tyler Cordeiro first pilfered Jannotta’s prescription pills as a teenager. He was 24 when he died of an overdose.
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When Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019, Jannotta, along with nearly 140,000 other people, filed claims against the company for the harm they said its drugs caused. Though the money could not bring back what they lost, a financial settlement represented an opportunity to get justice from the company and its multibillionaire owners, the Sackler family.
Then they waited. The Supreme Court in 2024 rejected the first bankruptcy settlement because it shielded the Sacklers from future lawsuits. Finally, last November, a federal judge approved a new plan that would allow the payouts to start.
But this $7.4 billion bankruptcy plan — including $870 million that has been set aside for individual victims — will shut out tens of thousands of those who originally applied for a settlement, ProPublica and The Philadelphia Inquirer found. Fewer than half of those who filed claims against Purdue will get any kind of help under the new plan, despite the company touting it as “the only opioid settlement to date that meaningfully compensates individual victims.”
Court records show the new plan slashed payments for victims, imposed tougher eligibility requirements and eliminated compensation for teenagers who bought Purdue drugs on the street. Estimated settlement amounts for people whose family members fatally overdosed dropped to as little as $8,000; the previous payout for an OxyContin death had been $48,000.
Most significantly, the new plan removed a key provision that allowed victims to submit a sworn affidavit, in lieu of a prescription or other medical or legal records, to prove they purchased Purdue opioids.
Similar sworn statements have been permitted in other major bankruptcy cases — such as those driven by sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church — to account for harm done years earlier where physical evidence is scant or impossible to obtain.
Several victims told ProPublica and the Inquirer that the loss of the affidavit option meant they had no hope of receiving a settlement. Purdue sold painkillers for decades, and, while laws vary by state, generally doctors, hospitals and pharmacies must keep prescription records for only a few years.
“I can’t turn up prescriptions for my son back when he was young, years ago,” Michigan resident Ellen Isaacs said. “They’re not available anymore.”
Her son, Ryan, died from an overdose at 33 in 2018 in Florida, the result of an addiction she said began when he was prescribed OxyContin after a high school injury.
The changes between the initial and revised settlement agreements were negotiated out of the public eye for months, with key details later scattered across thousands of pages of court filings, hearing transcripts and sworn declarations. To date, they have not received any media attention or public scrutiny. The winnowing of victims has been the result of byzantine legal procedures, strict vetting and tightened eligibility rules, which victims told ProPublica and the Inquirer took them by surprise.
To receive compensation, victims also have had to face a series of deadlines twice — once in connection with Purdue’s first bankruptcy plan and then again once a new plan was approved to address the Supreme Court decision. First, to qualify for a settlement at all, victims had to have used Purdue opioids before Sept. 15, 2019, the day Purdue declared bankruptcy. The deadline to file a claim was in June 2020. But that deadline changed multiple times, once to July 2020 and then again to September 2021. After that, the door to a settlement under the bankruptcy plan shut for good.
I can’t turn up prescriptions for my son back when he was young, years ago. They’re not available anymore.
Ellen Isaacs, whose son died from an overdose at 33
Just under 140,000 people met that final deadline, but years of litigation ensued and it wasn’t until almost four years later, by late July 2025, that they had to file evidence for their claims. About 63,000 did, according to a November court filing from settlement trust administrator Edward Gentle.
Purdue and its attorneys moved to formally eliminate most of the 80,000 individuals who missed the deadline from any payout under this settlement plan, and the judge approved the expungement motion Tuesday. Under certain circumstances, these excluded victims and others who missed earlier filing deadlines can still sue the Sacklers directly.
Purdue’s attorneys said in court that the company played no role in designing the claims process. The company referred questions for this story to Akin, the major Washington D.C.-based firm representing the victims and other creditors. Akin endorsed the new bankruptcy plan despite the tighter eligibility criteria and lower survivors’ benefits. The firm declined to speak on the record. It said the official creditors’ committee had no comment.
Andrews & Higgins, a firm that also represented victims, did not respond to requests for comment.
Edward E. Neiger, the co-managing partner of ASK LLP, another major firm representing victims, also endorsed the plan. His firm twice praised the 2021 affidavit option in early court pleadings but made no mention in hearings of its disappearance from the new plan.
Neiger said “contractual and court-imposed confidentiality provisions” prevented him from discussing the changes. He said in a written statement that his firm is “proud of helping facilitate the record-breaking and historic $850 million-plus settlement on behalf of the actual, human victims of the opioid crisis.” The Purdue fund is more than eight times as big as the combined victims’ funds financed by the two other big bankrupt opioid makers, Endo and Mallinckrodt.
More than 300,000 people have died from opioid prescription drug overdoses and millions more became addicted. Federal prosecutors have twice brought charges against Purdue itself. The drug firm pleaded guilty in 2007 to misleading the public about the dangers of its opioids.
A federal judge on Tuesday delayed until next week the sentencing of Purdue on three felony charges related to paying kickbacks to doctors and reckless sales of its opioids.
The Sacklers, who have never been criminally charged, have denied wrongdoing.
People who lost loved ones due to the opioid epidemic gather outside the Department of Justice in 2021 to call for the agency to bring criminal charges against members of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma. Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images