Sackler family members submit Motions to Dismiss Massachusetts complaint in opioid case

Attorneys for current and former directors of Purdue Pharma, including members of the Drs. Mortimer and Raymond Sackler families, announced in a press release earlier this week that they have filed a Motions to Dismiss a complaint filed against them by the Massachusetts Attorney General, stating that the accusations are false and misleading and mostly generated by media hype.   

“The Motions to Dismiss detail the distortions and mischaracterizations that riddle the amended complaint which overlooks the proper role of a Board of Directors in corporate governance,” said the law firm in its statement. “It does not allege any action at all by some of the directors, let alone any wrongful conduct, but drags them into the litigation anyway. We are confident the court will look past the inflammatory media coverage generated by the misleading complaint and apply the law fairly by dismissing all of these claims.”

The law firm’s statement, which they placed on Business Wire, also noted a long list of False Allegations Regarding Dr. Richard Sackler, son of Raymond Sackler and the former chairman and president of Purdue. Those allegations include:

· The complaint falsely claims that Dr. Sackler wrote "not too bad, could have been far worse” in response to a supposed report of 59 deaths. In reality, he was responding to the full text of a 2001 New York Times article titled “Cancer Painkillers are Being Abused” and nothing in his comment referred to deaths.

· The complaint fabricates claims that Dr. Sackler responded to “Time’s coverage of people who lost their lives to OxyContin” by sending a message to Purdue “staff” stating “deaths were the fault of the drug addicts.” In reality, his message contained no such statement — not even a reference to death — in the cited document, either in words or in substance.

· The complaint fabricates a claim that in a 1997 email Dr. Sackler supposedly “directed Purdue staff not to tell doctors the truth” — that “OxyContin is more potent than morphine” — “because the truth could reduce OxyContin sales.” In reality, the actual emails contain no such direction.

· The complaint includes false allegations that Dr. Sackler “instructed executives that OxyContin … enhanced personal performance, like Viagra.” In reality, the cited underlying 1998 email makes clear that Dr. Sackler was not instructing executives about anything or commenting on how OxyContin could be used.

·  The complaint presents a misleading image of Dr. Sackler discussing a “blizzard of prescriptions” when OxyContin was launched, omitting the reality that he made these comments after arriving a day late for a meeting because of the historic blizzard of 1996.

· The complaint devotes three paragraphs to the inaccurate suggestion that Richard Sackler “went into the field to promote opioids to doctors alongside a sales rep” in 2011. In reality, that did not happen, and Dr. Richard never went on sales calls to promote OxyContin.