When a judge approved Purdue Pharma’s long-awaited bankruptcy restructuring plan last month, he included a unique provision protecting the city of Baltimore’s ability to sue the family behind the OxyContin-making giant.

The agreement, which the city negotiated with Purdue Pharma, representatives of the Sackler family and other key players in the bankruptcy, means that Baltimore could try to take the Sacklers to trial in an effort to win damages related to the opioid crisis, much like it did last year in a successful case against two major drug distributors.

The Sacklers built an enormous fortune through their ownership of Purdue Pharma, the company that developed OxyContin. The company and the family have since faced thousands of lawsuits — and become synonymous with the opioid crisis in America — as evidence revealed that Purdue falsely portrayed OxyContin as safe and nonaddictive, helping to fuel an explosion in the painkiller’s popularity.

The branches of the family with ties to OxyContin have been labeled “the worst drug dealers in history,” depicted in two different miniseries about the opioid epidemic, and shunned from polite society: Major museums across the globe stopped accepting donations from the Sacklers or removed their name from buildings as their reputation collapsed.

The family also attempted to insulate themselves from all of those opioid lawsuits.

Purdue Pharma declared bankruptcy in 2019, but the Sackler family did not, and lawsuits against both were put on hold while the case worked its way through bankruptcy court in New York. The proposed reorganization plan originally included a condition that would have permanently blocked claims against the Sacklers, even though they hadn’t filed for bankruptcy.

The plan went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last year that the condition shielding the Sacklers was not allowed.

When a new reorganization plan came up for consideration recently, the city of Baltimore objected. In short, the plan required state and local governments with claims against Purdue Pharma to opt into a settlement agreement with the Sacklers if they wanted their claims against Purdue to be addressed quickly and without objection.

Parties that opted out, and chose to pursue litigation against the Sacklers, would have to wait at least two years before receiving money from Purdue Pharma, and their claims would face additional obstacles in bankruptcy court that might still block their lawsuits against the Sacklers.

Baltimore was the only government to object to the proposal.

“It’s well past time to end the contortions and to put forward a plan that grants Purdue and its creditors the relief the Bankruptcy Code allows … and that is not conditioned on unlawful relief for the Sacklers,” wrote the city’s attorneys, Seth Ard and Max Straus, of the law firm Susman Godfrey.

The city ultimately withdrew the objection after reaching an agreement that will allow Baltimore to proceed with its lawsuit against the Sacklers without impeding its claims in the Purdue bankruptcy.

Lawyers for the Sackler family did not return phone messages requesting comment.

Baltimore sued the Sacklers as part of its sweeping opioid lawsuit against drug manufacturers, distributors and other companies accused of contributing to the city’s deadly overdose crisis. The claims against Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers were put on hold when Purdue filed for bankruptcy, and have remained in limbo in Baltimore City Circuit Court ever since.

Baltimore’s case against the other companies continued, and the city went on to win more than $266 million from a pair of drug distributors, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, at a trial last year. A judge slashed the city’s winnings to about $150 million, and the case has been appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court. The city also won another $400 million from companies that chose to settle rather than go to trial.

The bankruptcy case is not the first time Baltimore has chosen to go it alone against a pharmaceutical giant. Before taking McKesson and AmerisourceBergen (now called Cencora) to trial, Baltimore turned down a $400 million settlement that the state of Maryland reached with Johnson & Johnson and major drug distributors. The money will be paid out over 18 years and distributed among dozens of local governments that signed on to the agreement.

Rejecting the deal was risky. Baltimore could have walked away with nothing if its trial strategy against the drug companies failed. Instead, the city won far more by pursuing its lawsuit than it would have if it had taken the settlement proposed by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office.

By pushing back against the Purdue bankruptcy deal and striking its own agreement, Baltimore once again chose an individualist path that brings risk but could pay off if a trial against the Sacklers is successful.

In a statement, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s office said the city’s litigation has always been about securing justice for Baltimore residents, who were disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis. Baltimore has experienced the highest rate of overdose deaths of any major city in America, a joint New York Times/Baltimore Banner investigation found last year.

“Our repeated victories against Big Pharma prove that we were right to stand up to these companies on our own,” Scott’s office said in the statement. “Had we not, we would have received a fraction of the funding that we now have to fight the opioid epidemic. We look forward to our day in court with the Sackler family.”

Madeleine O’Neill is a freelance reporter based in Baltimore.