
Lawsuits ramp up pressure on family that owns opioid company
The legal pressure on the prominent family behind the company that makes OxyContin, the prescription painkiller that helped fuel the nation's opioid epidemic, is likely to get more intense. The Sackler family came under heavy scrutiny this week when a legal filing in a Massachusetts case asserted that family members and company executives sought to push prescriptions of the drug and downplay its risks. Those revelations are likely to be a preview of the claims in a series of expanding legal challenges. Members of the family that controls Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma are also defendants in a lawsuit brought by New York's Suffolk County. Few, if any, other governments have sued the family so far. But Paul Hanly, a lawyer representing the county, said he expects to add the Sacklers to ot...