Ruling extends the wait for North Dakota share of opioid settlement

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The North Dakota state government, as well as counties, cities and tribes, are among tens of thousands of plaintiffs headed back to the bargaining table after the U.S. Supreme Court in June decided to ax a billion-dollar settlement with OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma.

Purdue Pharma has been implicated in the U.S. opioid epidemic for pushing OxyContin and other pain medications on doctors, leading health care providers to over-prescribe the pills. Roughly three-quarters of all overdose deaths in North Dakota between January 2019 and June 2023 were linked to opioids, according to preliminary data published by the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services.

Around 2,900 lawsuits have been filed against Purdue, accusing the manufacturer of false marketing and demanding trillions of dollars in relief. In September 2019, Purdue declared bankruptcy.

In 2021, a settlement agreement between the plaintiffs, Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, was approved in New York bankruptcy court.

North Dakota awards over $7M in opioid settlement fund dollars

The agreement was controversial because it would have protected the Sacklers from future lawsuits. Members of the family agreed to pay up to $6 billion as part of the settlement so long as they could not be sued for opioid-related claims going forward. Purdue would pay an additional several billion dollars as part of the deal.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June ultimately ruled 5-4 to throw the plan out. The court’s opinion, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, said the agreement violated federal bankruptcy laws.

That decision sent the case back to New York bankruptcy court, said attorney Tim Purdon of law firm Robins Kaplan, which represents 28 tribes in the settlement, including the five tribes in North Dakota.

“Now we’re going to try work within the bankruptcy court process and see if we can take another look at this, see if there is additional negotiations that could lead to a renewed deal that takes into account the legal ruling of the Supreme Court,” Purdon said.

If the agreement had been left in place, Purdue and the Sacklers would have paid up to $10 billion to roughly 138,000 plaintiffs.

All 574 federally recognized tribes were eligible to receive up to approximately $150 million, according to a tribal opioid settlement website maintained by Virginia-based law firm BrownGreer.

It’s not known how much of that would have made it to North Dakota.

While the amount was never finalized, the state government expected to receive roughly between $7 million and $8 million from the Purdue settlement, said Elin Alm, Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division director for the North Dakota Attorney General’s Office.

She said that based on how the agreement was written, North Dakota cities and counties probably wouldn’t have received money directly from the settlement.

The money likely would have gone straight to the state’s opioid settlement fund , Alm said. Money in that fund can only be used for approved uses, including the treatment and prevention of opioid addiction.

It took Purdue and the plaintiffs a couple years to reach the first bankruptcy deal. Purdon said he’s hopeful that the case will move more quickly the second time around.

Native tribes are involved in eight other settlements with opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies expected to total more than $1 billion, according to BrownGreer’s website.

The state of North Dakota, meanwhile, has reached 11 other settlements related to opioid litigation, Alm said in a statement to the North Dakota Monitor.

“The only big actor remaining is Purdue,” Alm wrote. “There could also still be some future minor settlements.”

Local governments had received about $2.3 million in payments from other opioid-related settlements as of early April, according to data on the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services’ website.

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