Mary Jannotta cut meat and cheese behind the deli counters of Acme and Pathmark supermarkets in suburban Philadelphia for decades, developing pain associated with standing work. A botched back operation in 2008 made the pain worse. His doctor repeatedly prescribed him OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s flagship painkiller — the high-dose opioid that the company later admitted it criminally marketed and distributed.
Jannotta said she quickly became addicted to opioids. Cut off by her doctors, she went to Kensington, home of Philadelphia’s dangerous open-air drug market, to buy pills. She ultimately lost her car, her house and her grandson. Tyler Cordeiro first stole Jannotta’s prescription pills when he was a teenager. He was 24 when he died of an overdose.
When Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019, Jannotta, along with nearly 140,000 others, filed lawsuits against the company for harm they claimed its drugs caused. Although money could not bring back what they had lost, a financial settlement represented an opportunity to obtain justice from the company and its multi-billionaire owners, the Sackler family.
Then they waited. In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected the first bankruptcy settlement because it protected the Sacklers from future lawsuits. Finally, last November, a federal judge approved a new plan that would allow payments to begin.
But this $7.4 billion bankruptcy plan — $870 million of which was earmarked for individual victims — will exclude tens of thousands of those who initially sought settlement, ProPublica and The Philadelphia Inquirer found. Fewer than half of those who filed lawsuits against Purdue will get any relief under the new plan, although the company touts it as “the only opioid settlement to date that meaningfully compensates individual victims.”
Court records show the new plan reduced payments to victims, imposed stricter eligibility requirements and eliminated compensation for teens who bought Purdue drugs on the street. Estimated settlement amounts for people whose family members died from fatal overdoses fell to just $8,000; the previous payment for an OxyContin death was $48,000.
Most importantly, the new plan removed a key provision that allowed victims to submit an affidavit, instead of a prescription or other medical or legal records, to prove they purchased Purdue opioids.
Similar affidavits have been allowed in other major bankruptcy cases — such as those motivated by sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church — to account for harm caused years earlier when physical evidence is rare or impossible to obtain.
Multiple victims told ProPublica and the Inquirer that losing the affidavit option meant they had no hope of getting a settlement. Purdue has sold painkillers for decades, and although laws vary by state, doctors, hospitals and pharmacies generally only have to keep prescription records for a few years.
“I can’t find prescriptions for my son when he was young, years ago,” said Ellen Isaacs, a Michigan resident. “They are no longer available.”
Her son, Ryan, died of an overdose at age 33 in 2018 in Florida, the result of an addiction she said began when he was prescribed OxyContin after an injury in high school.
The changes between the original and revised settlement agreements were negotiated out of the public eye for months, with key details then scattered across thousands of pages of court records, court transcripts and affidavits. To date, they have received no media attention or public scrutiny. The sorting of victims is the result of byzantine legal procedures, strict vetting and tightened eligibility rules, which victims say were taken by surprise by ProPublica and the Inquirer.
To receive compensation, victims also faced a series of delays twice: once in connection with Purdue’s first bankruptcy plan, and then again after a new plan was approved to follow the Supreme Court’s decision. First, to qualify for a settlement, victims had to have used Purdue opioids before September 15, 2019, the day Purdue declared bankruptcy. The deadline to file a claim was set for June 2020. But that deadline was changed several times, once to July 2020, and then again to September 2021. After that, the door to a settlement under the bankruptcy plan permanently closed.
I can’t find prescriptions for my son when he was young, years ago. They are no longer available.
Ellen Isaacs, whose son died of an overdose at age 33
Just under 140,000 people met that final deadline, but years of litigation followed and it wasn’t until almost four years later, at the end of July 2025, that they had to file evidence for their claims. About 63,000 did, according to a court filing in November by the settlement trust’s administrator, Edward Gentle.
Purdue and its lawyers moved to formally remove most of the 80,000 people who had missed the deadline for any payments under that settlement plan, and the judge approved the motion to expunge Tuesday. Under certain circumstances, these excluded victims and others who failed to meet prior filing deadlines can still sue the Sacklers directly.
Purdue’s lawyers said in court that the company had no role in designing the claims process. The firm referred questions for this story to Akin, the primary Washington, D.C.-based firm that represents victims and other creditors. Akin approved the new bankruptcy plan despite the stricter eligibility requirements and reduced survivor benefits. The company declined to comment officially. The official committee of creditors made no comment.
Andrews & Higgins, a firm that also represented victims, did not respond to requests for comment.
Edward E. Neiger, co-managing partner of ASK LLP, another large firm representing victims, also endorsed the plan. His office twice welcomed the 2021 affidavit option during early court arguments, but made no mention during hearings of its removal from the new plan.
Neiger said “contractual and court-imposed confidentiality provisions” prevented him from discussing the changes. He said in a written statement that his company is “proud to have helped facilitate the record and historic settlement of more than $850 million on behalf of the real human victims of the opioid crisis.” The Purdue fund is more than eight times larger than the combined victims’ funds funded by the two other major failed opioid makers, Endo and Mallinckrodt.
More than 300,000 people have died from opioid prescription drug overdoses and millions more have become addicted. Federal prosecutors have twice filed charges against Purdue itself. The drug company pleaded guilty in 2007 to misleading the public about the dangers of its opioids.
A federal judge on Tuesday postponed Purdue’s sentencing until next week on three criminal charges related to paying kickbacks to doctors and recklessly selling its opioids.
The Sacklers, who have never been criminally charged, have denied any wrongdoing.
A punch in the gut
Under standard procedure, those who filed against Purdue in the bankruptcy court in the first round — including cities, hospitals and individual opioid victims — were eligible to vote on the new bankruptcy plan. Supporters of the new plan point to a higher minimum payment of $8,000 for all eligible claimants, up from $3,500. They also claim that it will streamline the settlement process so that payments are made more quickly and in full. The Sacklers also invested an additional $100 million in the victims’ fund.
About 58,000 of 140,000 individual applicants voted in favor of the plan last September, almost all in favor. But nearly two dozen victims — a mix of people who voted for and against the plan and who didn’t vote at all — said they were unaware of the stricter evidence requirements until ProPublica and the Inquirer contacted them.
Shortly before the judge approved the revised bankruptcy plan, Jannotta appeared by video call in November to address the court, delivering a statement that his daughter, Susan Ousterman, had helped draft.
The Bucks County, Pa., grandmother, then 76, looked frail but resolute. She had voted against approving the plan.
The justice system should be the place where the weak can finally have their voice heard, but in this courtroom, it is used to protect the powerful.
Mary Jannotta, whose claim against Purdue Pharma was rejected
“The justice system should be the place where the weak can finally make themselves heard, but in this courtroom it is used to protect the powerful,” she said during a session bringing together more than 100 lawyers and victims.
The day after Jannotta’s speech, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean H. Lane praised the new plan. He said this places a “very modest burden of justification” on victims to demonstrate that Purdue harmed them, “an extremely low bar.”
The Purdue victims’ trust has twice indicated it plans to deny Jannotta’s claim, once for missing a 2021 claims deadline that had been changed at least twice, and then for evidence of insufficient orders.
But Jannotta shared with ProPublica and Inquirer a pharmaceutical file of his o rdonations she said she sent to the trust. It includes 16 eligible prescriptions for Purdue opioids listed on the trust’s website. Gentle, an Alabama attorney who specializes in managing trusts to compensate victims of corporate disasters and scandals, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Jannotta is furious.
“After everything I went through, what my family went through and finding out that no one was really being held accountable really hit me in the gut,” Jannotta said. “It was a punch in the gut.”
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After the Supreme Court rejected the original 2021 bankruptcy plan, Purdue attorney Marshall S. Huebner said the task at hand was simple: overturn the Sacklers’ immunity but “not go back to ground zero.”
Attorneys representing Purdue, the Sackler family and other stakeholder groups, including victims, began months of confidential mediations. Court records do not explain why the more generous benefits and eligibility requirements of the first plan underwent significant revisions.
What they show is that after years of litigation, hearings, negotiations and delays, dramatic changes in the criteria for claiming occurred in the space of five weeks.
In a flurry of activity beginning March 8, 2025, Purdue filed documents that show lines crossing out victims’ eligibility criteria and compensation amounts, with no explanation or substitute language. Purdue later filed additional documents with new requirements, but no mention of the earlier affidavit option for adults or adolescents. In April, Lane approved changes to the claims process and, at the same hearing, approved Purdue’s requests, with the support of victims’ attorneys, to hire Gentle and restart its claims review.
That meant victims began submitting claims with evidence even before Lane approved the new bankruptcy plan in November 2025. The trust’s administrator, Gentle, had already sent letters to potential claimants indicating they could be denied unless admissible evidence was provided within 30 days.
A review by ProPublica and Inquirer of nearly 1,000 pages of transcripts covering 10 public hearings on the plan found that Lane and attorneys representing Purdue and the opioid claimants held no in-depth public discussions about differences in criteria between the original and revised plans — or their potential impact.
Cindy Singer, a Florida resident, was among the applicants who voted for the plan and now regrets it. She said her son, Rory, started taking OxyContin after a construction accident and died three years later, in 2015, of an overdose at age 28. According to the letter she received from the trust, she failed to produce a prescription linking him to a Purdue opioid.
Singer said she didn’t understand how crucial the affidavit option would be to her claim.
“We didn’t even know it existed,” she said.
Cheryl Juaire of Massachusetts lost two sons to drug overdoses. She served on Akin’s oversight committee as a victims’ representative. Juaire is waiting to hear if his requests will be approved.
She said she didn’t remember Akin’s lawyers telling her about the eligibility changes. Still, Juaire said she maintains her support for the new plan because the Purdue case has dragged on too long.
But she acknowledged that the loss of the affidavit option appears to have surprised other applicants.
“I’m bombarded with calls from people saying, ‘Hey, I filed a claim and I’m getting rejected. I can’t get this order,'” Juaire said. “It breaks my heart.”
Withholdings, attorney fees and small checks
What’s particularly galling, some victims say, is that their compensation for years of fighting for justice will amount to a day’s pay for a Purdue lawyer like Huebner, who charges $2,935 an hour.
Well over $100 million of the settlement money will be paid to the plaintiff law firms that represented Purdue victims throughout the bankruptcy and to cover the costs of operating the trust. Fees for administering similar funds for opioid victims, also managed by Gentle, range from about 15 percent to more than a quarter of compensation paid to victims, according to trust documents.
ASK LLP and its partner Andrews & Higgins enrolled 30,000 Purdue victims in exchange for up to 40 percent of their individual settlements.
Many of us have buried children and you are going to walk away with more money than we will ever see.
Maureen Kielian, a Purdue settlement plaintiff, lawyers in the case
“To me, it’s terrible. It adds even more hurt to the victims’ families,” said Maureen Kielian of Florida. “A lot of us have buried children and you’re going to walk away with more money than we’ll ever see.”
She became an outspoken critic of the opioid industry after helping her son recover from his addiction. In November, Gentle criticized his claim for lack of evidence. She appealed for confidence but is not optimistic.
Connecticut couple Beverly and David Melenski, whose son had been addicted to opioids for 20 years, were included on an 8,000-page list of late filers that Purdue and Akin, the court-appointed victims’ attorneys, sought to expunge.
They didn’t have the prescription records that told the story of their son’s decades of addiction to opioids. But they had a letter they wrote to a doctor in 2009 asking him to stop giving their son OxyContin. That doctor, records show, lost his license two years later for recklessly prescribing Purdue drugs and other opioids.
The Melenskis have since successfully appealed and Gentle is currently reviewing their request.
Purdue’s money won’t even cover a fraction of what they spent on rehab, but David Melenski said it would be “at least an acknowledgment of their wrongdoing.”
They are awaiting a decision from the trust.
