EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was initially printed by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of energy. It was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Philadelphia Inquirer. Sign up for Dispatches, a e-newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing round the nation, to obtain its tales in your inbox each week.
Mary Jannotta sliced meat and cheese behind deli counters at Acme and Pathmark supermarkets in the Philadelphia suburbs for many years, growing aches that got here with engaged on her ft. A botched again surgical procedure in 2008 made the ache worse. Her physician repeatedly prescribed OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s marquee painkiller — the high-dose opioid the firm later admitted it criminally marketed and distributed.
Jannotta mentioned she quickly turned depending on opioids. Cut off by her medical doctors, she discovered her solution to Kensington, dwelling of Philadelphia’s harmful open-air drug market, to attain capsules. She ultimately misplaced her automotive, her dwelling — and her grandson. Tyler Cordeiro first pilfered Jannotta’s prescription capsules as an adolescent. He was 24 when he died of an overdose.
When Purdue filed for chapter in 2019, Jannotta, together with practically 140,000 different individuals, filed claims towards the firm for the hurt they mentioned its medicine triggered. Though the cash couldn’t convey again what they misplaced, a monetary settlement represented a possibility to get justice from the firm and its multibillionaire house owners, the Sackler household.
Then they waited. The Supreme Court in 2024 rejected the first chapter settlement as a result of it shielded the Sacklers from future lawsuits. Finally, final November, a federal choose accredited a brand new plan that may permit the payouts to begin.
But this $7.4 billion chapter plan — together with $870 million that has been put aside for particular person victims — will shut out tens of 1000’s of those that initially utilized for a settlement, ProPublica and The Philadelphia Inquirer discovered. Fewer than half of those that filed claims towards Purdue will get any variety of assist beneath the new plan, regardless of the firm touting it as “the only opioid settlement to date that meaningfully compensates individual victims.”
Court data present the new plan slashed funds for victims, imposed harder eligibility necessities and eradicated compensation for youngsters who purchased Purdue medicine on the avenue. Estimated settlement quantities for individuals whose members of the family fatally overdosed dropped to as little as $8,000; the earlier payout for an OxyContin demise had been $48,000.
Most considerably, the new plan eliminated a key provision that allowed victims to submit a sworn affidavit, in lieu of a prescription or different medical or authorized data, to show they bought Purdue opioids.
Similar sworn statements have been permitted in different main chapter instances — akin to these pushed by sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church — to account for hurt performed years earlier the place bodily proof is scant or inconceivable to acquire.
Several victims informed ProPublica and the Inquirer that the loss of the affidavit choice meant that they had no hope of receiving a settlement. Purdue bought painkillers for many years, and, whereas legal guidelines fluctuate by state, usually medical doctors, hospitals and pharmacies should preserve prescription data for just a few years.
“I can’t turn up prescriptions for my son back when he was young, years ago,” Michigan resident Ellen Isaacs mentioned. “They’re not available anymore.”
Her son, Ryan, died from an overdose at 33 in 2018 in Florida, the end result of an dependancy she mentioned started when he was prescribed OxyContin after a highschool damage.
The adjustments between the preliminary and revised settlement agreements have been negotiated out of the public eye for months, with key particulars later scattered throughout 1000’s of pages of courtroom filings, listening to transcripts and sworn declarations. To date, they haven’t obtained any media consideration or public scrutiny. The winnowing of victims has been the end result of byzantine authorized procedures, strict vetting and tightened eligibility guidelines, which victims informed ProPublica and the Inquirer took them without warning.
To obtain compensation, victims even have needed to face a sequence of deadlines twice — as soon as in reference to Purdue’s first chapter plan after which once more as soon as a brand new plan was accredited to handle the Supreme Court choice. First, to qualify for a settlement in any respect, victims needed to have used Purdue opioids earlier than Sept. 15, 2019, the day Purdue declared chapter. The deadline to file a declare was in June 2020. But that deadline modified a number of occasions, as soon as to July 2020 after which once more to September 2021. After that, the door to a settlement beneath the chapter plan shut for good.
Just beneath 140,000 individuals met that last deadline, however years of litigation ensued and it wasn’t till virtually 4 years later, by late July 2025, that they needed to file proof for his or her claims. About 63,000 did, in accordance with a November courtroom submitting from settlement belief administrator Edward Gentle.
Purdue and its attorneys moved to formally get rid of most of the 80,000 people who missed the deadline from any payout beneath this settlement plan, and the choose accredited the expungement movement Tuesday. Under sure circumstances, these excluded victims and others who missed earlier submitting deadlines can nonetheless sue the Sacklers instantly.
Purdue’s attorneys mentioned in courtroom that the firm performed no position in designing the claims course of. The firm referred questions for this story to Akin, the main Washington D.C.-based agency representing the victims and different collectors. Akin endorsed the new chapter plan regardless of the tighter eligibility standards and decrease survivors’ advantages. The agency declined to talk on the file. It mentioned the official collectors’ committee had no remark.
Andrews & Higgins, a agency that additionally represented victims, didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Edward E. Neiger, the co-managing associate of ASK LLP, one other main agency representing victims, additionally endorsed the plan. His agency twice praised the 2021 affidavit choice in early courtroom pleadings however made no point out in hearings of its disappearance from the new plan.
Neiger mentioned “contractual and court-imposed confidentiality provisions” prevented him from discussing the adjustments. He mentioned in a written assertion that his agency 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 greater than eight occasions as huge as the mixed victims’ funds financed by the two different huge bankrupt opioid makers, Endo and Mallinckrodt.
More than 300,000 individuals have died from opioid prescription drug overdoses and hundreds of thousands extra turned addicted. Federal prosecutors have twice introduced expenses towards Purdue itself. The drug agency pleaded responsible in 2007 to deceptive the public about the risks of its opioids.
A federal choose on Tuesday delayed till subsequent week the sentencing of Purdue on three felony expenses associated to paying kickbacks to medical doctors and reckless gross sales of its opioids.
The Sacklers, who’ve by no means been criminally charged, have denied wrongdoing.
Under commonplace process, those that filed a declare towards Purdue with the chapter courtroom in the first spherical — together with cities, hospitals and particular person opioid victims — have been entitled to vote on the new chapter plan. Proponents of the new plan level to the next minimal cost for all qualifying claimants of $8,000, up from the earlier $3,500. They additionally say it will streamline the settlement course of so funds go out sooner and in full. The Sacklers additionally put an extra $100 million in the victims’ fund.
About 58,000 of the 140,000 particular person claimants voted on the plan final September, practically all in favor. But practically two dozen victims — a mixture of individuals who voted for and towards the plan and who didn’t vote in any respect — mentioned they have been unaware of the tighter proof necessities till ProPublica and the Inquirer contacted them.
Shortly earlier than the choose accredited the revised chapter plan, Jannotta appeared by way of video name in November to handle the courtroom, delivering an announcement that her daughter, Susan Ousterman, helped craft.
The Bucks County, Pennsylvania, grandmother, then 76, appeared frail however resolute. She had voted towards approval of the plan.
“The legal system should be where the powerless can finally be heard, but in this courtroom it’s being used to shield the powerful,” she informed a session filled with greater than 100 legal professionals and victims.
The day after Jannotta spoke, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean H. Lane hailed the new plan. He mentioned it imposed a “very modest burden of substantiation” for victims to indicate Purdue had harmed them, “an exceedingly low bar.”
The belief for Purdue’s victims has twice indicated that it plans to reject Jannotta’s declare, as soon as for lacking a 2021 declare deadline that had been modified at the very least twice, after which once more for insufficient proof of prescriptions.
But Jannotta shared with ProPublica and the Inquirer a pharmacy file of her prescriptions that she says she despatched to the belief. It consists of 16 qualifying prescriptions for Purdue opioids listed on the belief’s web site. Gentle, an Alabama lawyer who specializes in operating trusts to compensate victims of disasters and company scandals, didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Jannotta is fuming.
“After everything I went through, what my family went through, and to find out nobody was really being held responsible really hit me in the gut,” Jannotta mentioned. “It was a punch in the gut.”
After the Supreme Court rejected the unique 2021 chapter plan, Purdue legal professional Marshall S. Huebner mentioned that the job forward was simple: to undo immunity for the Sacklers however “not to go back to ground zero.”
Attorneys representing Purdue, the Sackler household and different stakeholder teams, together with victims, started months of confidential mediations. Court data don’t clarify why the extra beneficiant profit and eligibility necessities in the first plan underwent vital revisions.
What they do present is that after years of litigation, hearings, negotiations and delays, dramatic adjustments to the declare standards occurred in a matter of 5 weeks.
In a flurry of exercise starting on March 8, 2025, Purdue filed paperwork that present strains crossing out the eligibility standards and sufferer compensation quantities, with no clarification or substitute language. Purdue then filed further paperwork with new necessities however no point out of the earlier affidavit choice for adults or teenagers. In April, Lane accredited the adjustments to the declare course of and, in the similar listening to, accredited requests from Purdue, with the help of victims’ attorneys, to rent Gentle and jump-start his overview of claims.
That meant victims began to submit claims with accompanying proof even earlier than Lane accredited the new chapter plan in November 2025. Trust administrator Gentle already had been sending letters to potential claimants stating they may be denied except qualifying proof was offered inside 30 days.
A ProPublica and Inquirer examination of practically 1,000 pages of transcripts masking 10 open courtroom hearings about the plan discovered that Lane and legal professionals representing Purdue and opioid claimants held no in-depth public discussions about the variations in standards between the unique and revised plans — or their potential affect.
Florida resident Cindy Singer was amongst the claimants who voted for the plan and now regrets it. She mentioned her son, Rory, started taking OxyContin after a development accident and died three years later, in 2015, of an overdose at age 28. According to the letter she obtained from the belief, she failed to provide a prescription linking him to a Purdue opioid.
Singer mentioned she didn’t perceive how essential the affidavit choice would be to her declare.
“We never even knew it existed,” she mentioned.
Cheryl Juaire of Massachusetts misplaced two sons to overdoses. She served on Akin’s oversight committee as a consultant for victims. Juaire is ready to listen to whether or not her claims will be accredited.
She mentioned she doesn’t recall Akin legal professionals telling her about the adjustments to eligibility. Even so, Juaire mentioned she stands by her help for the new plan as a result of the Purdue case had dragged on too lengthy.
But she acknowledged that the loss of the affidavit choice appears to have caught fellow claimants without warning.
“I’m being bombarded with calls from folks saying, ‘Hey, I put in a claim and I’m getting rejected. I can’t get that prescription,’” Juaire mentioned. “It’s breaking my heart.”
Holdbacks, lawyer charges and smaller checks
What is particularly galling, some victims mentioned, is that their compensation for years of combating for justice will boil right down to a day’s pay for a Purdue legal professional like Huebner, who expenses $2,935 an hour.
Well over $100 million of the settlement cash will go to the plaintiff regulation companies which have represented Purdue victims by means of the chapter and to cowl the price of operating the belief. Administration charges in comparable opioid sufferer funds, additionally run by Gentle, vary from about 15% to greater than one-quarter of the victims’awards, in accordance with paperwork from these trusts.
ASK LLP and its associate, Andrews & Higgins, signed up 30,000 Purdue victims in trade for as much as 40% of their particular person awards.
“To me, it’s appalling. It adds further injury to the family of the victims,” mentioned Maureen Kielian of Florida. “Many of us buried children and you are going to walk away with more money than we will ever see.”
She turned a vocal critic of the opioid business after serving to her son recuperate from dependancy. In November, Gentle faulted her declare for lack of proof. She has appealed to the belief however isn’t optimistic.
Connecticut couple Beverly and David Melenski, whose son was hooked on opioids for 20 years, have been on an 8,000-page record of late filers whom Purdue and Akin, the court-appointed victims’ legal professionals, sought to expunge.
They didn’t have the prescription data that informed the story of their son’s many years of dependency on opioids. But they did have a letter they wrote a health care provider in 2009 pleading with him to cease giving their son OxyContin. That physician, data present, misplaced his license two years later for recklessly prescribing Purdue medicine and different opioids.
The Melenskis have since efficiently appealed, and Gentle is vetting their declare.
The Purdue cash gained’t cowl even a fraction of what they spent on rehab, however David Melenski mentioned it could “at least it would be an acknowledgment of their wrongdoing.”
They are ready for a call from the belief.