Some Words Are Worth Billions of Dollars

The Sacklers’ release from liability stretches back to the “beginning of time”

“[T]he Sacklers are paying $4.275 billion and they very much plan — expect — to be done forever with this chapter,” Marshall Huebner declared and warned during the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy hearing on May 26th.

By “this chapter,” Marshall Huebner — and the Sacklers — mean the opioid epidemic. By “done forever,” Marshall Huebner — and the Sacklers — mean that they expect and plan to be off the hook from any civil liability.

There’s been a lot of great coverage of the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy lately. So you may have heard or read about the “releases,” the mechanism by which lawyers are erasing the Sacklers’ civil liability. A “release,” in practical terms, means that the person or company never has to worry again about being sued. Releases can be narrow in scope and limited in time; they can also be quasi-infinite. That is the case in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy, and it’s all being done with a few paragraphs’ worth of words.

When we talk about powerful writing, we’re usually talking about lifelike, evocative, emotional work that achieves a result in the reader. There’s another form of powerful writing: words that achieve a result in the world. Those kinds of words can be worth a lot of money. The language of the releases in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case, some of which I will share with you below, is, in fact, worth $4.275…