A federal bankruptcy judge gave conditional approval Wednesday to a sweeping settlement that will remove the Sackler family from ownership of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and devote potentially $10 billion to fighting the opioid crisis that has killed a half-million Americans over the past two decades.

If it withstands appeals, the deal will resolve a mountain of 3,000 lawsuits from state and local governments, Native American tribes, unions and others that accuse the company of helping to spark the overdose epidemic by aggressively marketing the prescription painkiller.

Under the settlement, the Sacklers will have to get out of the opioid business altogether and contribute $4.5 billion. But they will be shielded from any future lawsuits over opioids.

The drugmaker itself will be reorganized into a new charity-oriented company with a board appointed by public officials and will funnel its profits into government-led efforts to prevent and treat addiction.

Also, the settlement sets up a compensation fund that will pay some victims of drugs an expected $3,500 to $48,000 each.

After an all-day hearing in which he analyzed the plan’s pros and cons for a nonstop 6 1/2 hours, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said he would approve it as long as two relatively small changes were made. If so, he said, he will formally enter the decision on Thursday.

He said that while he does not have “fondness for the Sacklers or sympathy for them,” collecting money from them through lawsuits instead of a settlement would be complicated.

The deal comes nearly two years after the Stamford, Connecticut-based company filed for bankruptcy under the weight of the lawsuits.

Under the settlement, the Sacklers were not given immunity from criminal charges, though there have been no indications they will face any.

State and local governments came to support the plan overwhelmingly, if grudgingly in many cases. But nine states and others had opposed it, largely because of the protections granted to the family.

The attorneys general of Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Washington state immediately announced they will either appeal the ruling or explore the possibility of doing so.

The Sacklers “should not be allowed to manipulate bankruptcy laws to evade justice and protect their blood money,” Connecticut’s William Tong said.

Some families who lost loved ones to drugs also came out against the settlement, including Ed Bisch, of Westampton, New Jersey, whose 18-year-old son died of an overdose nearly 20 years ago. “The Sacklers are buying their immunity,” he said.

But other families said they did not want to risk losing the money that will go toward treatment and prevention.

“If they gave me a million dollars, would it help bring back my son?” said Lynn Wencus, of Wrentham, Massachusetts. “Let’s help the people who are really struggling with this disease.”

In a statement, members of the Sackler family said: “While we dispute the allegations that have been made about our family, we have embraced this path in order to help combat a serious and complex public health crisis.”

Purdue chairman Steve Miller said the settlement averts “years of value-destructive litigation” and “ensures that billions of dollars will be devoted to helping people and communities who have been hurt by the opioid crisis.”

The bankruptcy judge, based in White Plains, New York, had urged the holdouts to work out an agreement for the same reason.

“Bitterness over the outcome of this case is completely understandable,” Drain said. “But one also has to look at the process and the issues and risks and rewards and alternatives of continued litigation versus the settlement laid out in the plan.”

Some of the opioid deaths over the past two decades have been attributed to OxyContin and other prescription painkillers, but most are from illicit forms of opioids such as heroin and illegally produced fentanyl. Opioid-linked deaths in the U.S. continued at a record pace last year, hitting 70,000.

The crisis devastated the reputation of the Sackler family, major philanthropists whose name was once emblazoned on the walls of museums and universities around the world. With the settlement, family members who have owned the company will still be worth billions.

Whether the deal holds the Sacklers sufficiently accountable was the most contentious question through the proceedings. Those suing succeeded in boosting the amount the Sacklers would pay from a likely $3 billion.

David Sackler, a former Purdue board member, had testified that family members would not accept the agreement unless it protected them from lawsuits. Otherwise, he said, the family would defend itself in litigation that could drag on for years and eat up the company’s and the family’s assets in lawyers’ fees.

His father, Richard Sackler, a former Purdue president and board chairman, said under questioning that he, his family and the company did not bear responsibility for the opioid crisis.

Drain noted that none of the four Sacklers who testified offered an explicit apology. “A forced apology is not really an apology, so we will have to live without one,” he said.

The judge requested two somewhat technical changes to the plan: one clarifying that Sackler family members would be protected only from lawsuits involving opioids, and one on the procedure for bringing non-opioid claims against them.

One projection commissioned by a group of attorneys general found that the family’s wealth could rise from the current estimate of $10.7 billion to more than $14 billion by 2030 despite the required payments. That’s because the family could continue to benefit from investment returns and interest as they make their gradual contributions over a decade under the deal.

Lawyers for Purdue and branches of the Sackler family disputed the assumptions used in the projection.

The settlement also requires members of the Sackler family, who are scattered across the U.S., Britain and elsewhere in Europe, to get out of the opioid business worldwide.

Several attorneys general won another provision that will create a massive public repository of company documents, including ones that normally would be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Purdue has said the settlement overall will be worth about $10 billion, which includes the value of addiction treatment and overdose antidote drugs it is developing.

The bankruptcy case is not the first time Purdue had faced legal trouble over the marketing of its painkillers.

The company pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal charges it misled regulators and others about the addiction dangers of OxyContin and agreed to pay more than $600 million in penalties.

Last November, as part of a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, Purdue pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States and violating anti-kickback laws.

Purdue’s bankruptcy has been the highest-profile case in a complicated universe of opioid litigation.

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and the three largest U.S. drug distribution companies recently announced a settlement that could be worth up to $26 billion if state and local governments agree.

Individual trials also remain, including one scheduled to start in October in Cleveland over the role pharmacies played in the crisis. Other trials have been held this year in California, New York and West Virginia, though verdicts have yet to be reached.

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Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty Tuesday to three criminal charges, formally taking responsibility for its part in an opioid epidemic that has contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths but also angering critics who want to see individuals held accountable, in addition to the company.

In a virtual hearing with a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, the OxyContin maker admitted impeding the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s efforts to combat the addiction crisis.

Purdue acknowledged that it had not maintained an effective program to prevent prescription drugs from being diverted to the black market, even though it had told the DEA it did have such a program, and that it provided misleading information to the agency as a way to boost company manufacturing quotas.

It also admitted paying doctors through a speakers program to induce them to write more prescriptions for its painkillers.

And it admitted paying an electronic medical records company to send doctors information on patients that encouraged them to prescribe opioids.

The guilty pleas were entered by Purdue board chairperson Steve Miller on behalf of the company. They were part of a criminal and civil settlement announced last month between the Stamford, Connecticut-based company and the Justice Department.

The deal includes $8.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures, but the company is on the hook for a direct payment to the federal government of only a fraction of that, $225 million. It would pay the smaller amount as long as it executes a settlement moving through federal bankruptcy court with state and local governments and other entities suing it over the toll of the opioid epidemic.

Members of the wealthy Sackler family who own the company have also agreed to pay $225 million to the federal government to settle civil claims. No criminal charges have been filed against family members, although their deal leaves open the possibility of that in the future.

“Having our plea accepted in federal court, and taking responsibility for past misconduct, is an essential step to preserve billions of dollars of value” for the settlement it is pursuing through bankruptcy court, the company said in a statement.

“We continue to work tirelessly to build additional support for a proposed bankruptcy settlement, which would direct the overwhelming majority of the settlement funds to state, local and tribal governments for the purpose of abating the opioid crisis,” the statement read.

Purdue’s plea to federal crimes provides only minor comfort for advocates who want to see harsher penalties for the OxyContin maker and its owners.

The ongoing drug overdose crisis, which appears to be worsening during the coronavirus pandemic, has contributed to the deaths of more than 470,000 Americans over the past two decades, most of those from opioids both legal and illicit.

Cynthia Munger, whose son is in recovery from opioid addiction after being prescribed OxyContin more than a decade ago as a high school baseball player with a shoulder injury, is among the activists pushing for Purdue owners and company officials to be charged with crimes.

“Until we do that and we stop accusing brick and mortar and not individuals, nothing will change,” said Munger, who lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

The attorneys general for about half the states opposed the federal settlement, as well as the company’s proposed settlement in bankruptcy court. In the bankruptcy case, Purdue has proposed transforming into a public benefit corporation with its proceeds going to help address the opioid crisis.

The attorneys general and some activists are upset that despite the Sacklers giving up control of the company, the family remains wealthy and its members will not face prison or other individual penalties.

The activists say there’s no difference between the actions of the company and its owners, who also controlled Purdue’s board until the past few years.

Last week, as part of a motion to get access to more family documents, the attorneys general who oppose the deals filed documents that put members of the Sackler family at the center of Purdue’s continued push for OxyContin sales even as opioid-related deaths rose.

The newly public documents include emails among consultants from McKinsey & Corp. hired by the company to help boost the business. One from 2008, a year after the company first pleaded guilty to opioid-related crimes, says board members, including a Sackler family member, “‘blessed’ him to do whatever he thinks is necessary to ‘save the business.’”

Another McKinsey internal email details how a midlevel Purdue employee felt about the company. It offers more evidence of the Sacklers being hands-on, saying, “The brothers who started the company viewed all employees like the guys who ‘trim the hedges’ — employees should do exactly what’s asked of them and not say too much.”

The documents also describe the company trying to “supercharge” opioid sales in 2013, as reaction to the overdose crisis was taking a toll on prescribing.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Drugmaker Purdue Pharma, the company behind the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The deal does not release any of the company’s executives or owners — members of the wealthy Sackler family — from criminal liability, and a criminal investigation is ongoing. Family members said they acted “ethically and lawfully,” but some state attorneys general said the agreement fails to hold the Sacklers accountable.

The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said, and the agreement will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court.

The Sacklers will lose all control over their company, a move already in the works, and Purdue will become a public benefit company, meaning it will be governed by a trust that has to balance the trust’s interests against those of the American public and public health, officials said.

The settlement is the highest-profile display yet of the federal government seeking to hold a major drugmaker responsible for an opioid addiction and overdose crisis linked to more than 470,000 deaths in the country since 2000.

It comes less than two weeks before a presidential election where the opioid epidemic has taken a political back seat to the coronavirus pandemic and other issues, and gives President Donald Trump’s administration an example of action on the addiction crisis, which he promised early on in his term.

Ed Bisch, who lost his 18-year-old son to an overdose nearly 20 years ago, said he wants to see people associated with Purdue prosecuted and was glad the Sackler family wasn’t granted immunity.

He blames the company and Sacklers for thousands for deaths. “If it was sold for severe pain only from the beginning, none of this would have happened,” said Bisch, who now lives in Westampton, New Jersey. “But they got greedy.”

Brooke Feldman, a 39-year-old Philadelphia resident who is in recovery from opioid use disorder and is a social worker, said she is glad to see Purdue admit wrongdoing. She said the company had acted for years as “a drug cartel.”

Democratic attorneys general criticized the agreement as a “mere mirage” of justice for victims.

“The federal government had the power here to put the Sacklers in jail, and they didn’t,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement. “Instead, they took fines and penalties that Purdue likely will never fully pay.”

But members of the Sackler family, once listed as one of the nation’s wealthiest by Forbes magazine, said they had acted “ethically and lawfully” and that company documents required under the settlement to be made public will show that.

“Purdue deeply regrets and accepts responsibility for the misconduct detailed by the Department of Justice in the agreed statement of facts,” Steve Miller, who became chairman of the company’s board in 2018, said in a statement. No members of the Sackler family remain on that board, though they still own the company.

Family members, in a statement, expressed “deep compassion for people who suffer from opioid addiction and abuse and hope the proposal will be implemented as swiftly as possible to help address their critical needs.”

As part of the resolution, Purdue is admitting that it impeded the Drug Enforcement Administration by falsely representing that it had maintained an effective program to avoid drug diversion and by reporting misleading information to the agency to boost the company’s manufacturing quotas, the officials said.

Purdue is also admitting to violating federal anti-kickback laws by paying doctors, through a speaking program, to induce them to write more prescriptions for the company’s opioids and for using electronic health records software to influence the prescription of pain medication, according to the officials.

Purdue will make a direct payment to the government of $225 million, which is part of a larger $2 billion criminal forfeiture. In addition to that forfeiture, Purdue also faces a $3.54 billion criminal fine, though that money probably will not be fully collected because it will be taken through a bankruptcy, which includes a large number of other creditors, including thousands of state and local governments. Purdue will also agree to $2.8 billion in damages to resolve its civil liability.

Part of the money from the settlement would go to aid in medication-assisted treatment and other drug programs to combat the opioid epidemic. That part of the arrangement echoes the plan the company is pushing in bankruptcy court and which about half the states oppose.

As part of the plea deal, the company admits it violated federal law and “knowingly and intentionally conspired and agreed with others to aid and abet” the dispensing of medication from doctors “without a legitimate medical purpose and outside the usual course of professional practice,” according to the plea agreement.

While some state attorneys general opposed the prospect of Purdue becoming a public benefit company, the lead lawyers representing 2,800 local governments in lawsuits against Purdue and other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies put out a statement supporting the principle but saying more work needs to be done.

The Sackler family has already pledged to hand over the company itself plus at least $3 billion to resolve thousands of suits against the Stamford, Connecticut-based drugmaker. The company declared bankruptcy as a way to work out that plan, which could be worth $10 billion to $12 billion over time. In their statement, family members said that is “more than double all Purdue profits the Sackler family retained since the introduction of OxyContin.”

“Both the company and the shareholders are paying a very steep price for what occurred here,” Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said Wednesday.

While there are conflicting views of whether it’s enough, it’s clear the Sacklers’ reputation has taken a hit.

Until recently, the Sackler name was on museum galleries and educational programs around the world because of gifts from family members. But under pressure from activists, institutions from the Louvre in Paris to Tufts University in Massachusetts have dissociated themselves from the family in the last few years.

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