A court has ordered the release of secret documents detailing the way that Purdue Pharma marketed its prescription opioid OxyContin.
The decision issued Friday, from a three-judge panel in the Kentucky Court of Appeals, upholds a Kentucky lower court order in May 2016 to release the records. The health and science news organization STAT filed a motion more than two years ago to have the records unsealed.
The records will include internal emails, clinical trials analyses, settlements from earlier criminal cases, and how the sales team marketed the drug. They also are expected to include a deposition of Richard Sackler, a former president of Purdue and member of the family that founded the company.
Purdue can still request another hearing in front of the appeals court. It also has 30 days to ask the Supreme Court of Kentucky to overturn the appeals court’s decision. The company said in a statement to the Washington Examiner that it was “disappointed” with the ruling and that it intended to “pursue our rights to seek judicial review of the decision.”
“The documents in question were never entered into evidence and did not play a role in any judicial decision,” the statement said. “Under Kentucky law, such documents should remain private as outlined in the Protective Order with the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”
The records are tied to a settlement that Purdue reached with Kentucky in 2015, when the company agreed to pay $24 million following allegations that it illegally marketed its product. Most of the documents, acquired over about eight years, were destroyed, but some are in a sealed file in a Kentucky courthouse.
Rick Berke, the executive editor of STAT, said the news organization was thrilled by the ruling.
“More than two years after we filed this suit, the scourge of opioid addiction has grown worse, and the questions have grown about Purdue’s practices in marketing OxyContin,” he said. “It is vital that that we all learn as much as possible about the culpability of Purdue, and the consequences of the company’s decisions on the health of Americans.”
OxyContin is one of the prescription drugs that public health officials and medical experts have blamed for the current opioid crisis, which claimed nearly 48,000 lives in 2017.
