Gov. Charlie Baker went on record in federal bankruptcy court on Tuesday opposing a national injunction that would block lawsuits like the one filed by Massachusetts against Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family.
Attorney General Maura Healey has refused to sign Massachusetts on to a proposed settlement with between state and local governments and the opioid manufacturer, and has promised to continue her lawsuit against the company and the family that owns it for the role she alleges they played in the opioid addiction crisis.
Baker has supported Healey's decision.
"I stand with the Attorney General in calling for the Sacklers to pay from their own pockets. They should not be able to walk away a second time without taking responsibility for the harm they have caused," Baker wrote in a letter to Judge Robert Drain, a bankruptcy court judge in the Southern District of New York.
Baker called the proposed settlement, which has been rejected by 25 states, a "cynical and calculated abuse of our nation's bankruptcy laws" and criticized the mechanism in the settlement by which victims would be paid from future proceeds from the sale of Oxycontin.
"Such a resolution is not only counterproductive and perverse, resulting in more families suffering as their loved ones battle opioid addictions. It would also mean that the Sacklers would get to keep the billions of dollars they have pocketed from past opioid sales," Baker wrote.
