In a 5 – 4 decision not split along idealogical lines as Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor were in the minority, the Supreme Court on Thursday squashed the bankruptcy deal that would have had Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma settle for $6 billion with the families of addicts but shield the owners, the Sackler family, from further liability.
“Today’s decision is wrong on the law and devastating for more than 100,000 opioid victims and their families,” Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent. Gorsuch, who wrote for the majority, says “Surely if Congress had meant to reshape traditional practice so profoundly in the present bankruptcy code, extending to courts the capacious new power the plan proponents claim, one might have expected it to say so expressly somewhere in the code itself.” Sounds technicality-ish.