‘I’m Anxious for It to Go to the Supreme Court’: Why Nan Goldin Thinks the Latest Lawsuit Against the Sacklers Could Be the Biggest Yet

In an unusual move, Arizona is filing a lawsuit in the US
Supreme Court, alleging that members of the Sackler family
“siphoned” billions of dollars from their own company, Purdue
Pharma. The states lawyers’ accuse the owners of attempting to hide
the money to avoid paying opioid victims’ claims.

The Arizona state lawsuit claims that Purdue transferred more
than $4 billion to Sackler family members between 2008 and
2016. “We want the Supreme Court to make sure that we hold
accountable those individuals who are responsible for this
epidemic,” Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s attorney general, told the
New York
Times. “We allege that the Sacklers have siphoned billions
of dollars from Purdue in recent years. They did this while knowing
the company was facing massive financial liabilities.” The
aggressive marketing of Purdue’s prescription painkiller OxyContin
has been blamed for fueling America’s opioid epidemic.

“We’re very gratified to hear this,” the artist and
opioid-crisis activist Nan Goldin tells artnet News. “I am anxious
for it to go to the Supreme Court, and hope it won’t be thrown
out.” She calls it a test case that could set an important
precedent for all the other ongoing lawsuits. “We have been working as a group to claw back
the Sackler fortune for some time now,” Goldin says, referring to
the group she co-founded, P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction
Intervention Now).

The Sacklers and Purdue Pharma
“need to be held responsible, and the money needs to be divided as
compensation to the people who suffered,” she says.

A Long Shot

Mark Brnovich admits that getting the Supreme Court to agree to
take the case is a bit of a “long shot.” Lawsuits making similar
claims against the Sacklers have been brought to several state
courts, including in New York and Massachusetts, but not filed
directly to the Supreme Court. “It’s a little different. It’s a
little unorthodox. Sometimes you’ve just got to throw deep,” he
said.

The opioid crisis has contributed to hundreds of thousands of
deaths in the past two decades and cost the US economy more than
$78 billion annually, the Arizona lawyers claim in their
lawsuit. They write that Purdue has earned more than $30
billion from sales of OxyContin. “The state brings this action
because it has evidence that the Sacklers, Purdue, and other
defendants were parties in recent years to massive cash
transfers—totaling billions of dollars—at a time when Purdue faced
enormous exposure for its role in fueling the opioids crisis,” the
Arizona state lawyers argue, according to CNN. They hope
the US Supreme Court will block further transfers.

A spokesman for members of the Sackler family said the
accusations are “inconsistent with the factual record” and that the
family “will vigorously defend against them.” A lawyer for Purdue
did not respond to the New York Times‘s requests for
comment.

Nan Goldin’s Campaign

Earlier this summer, Goldin and P.A.I.N. staged a sudden action
at the Louvre in Paris to demand it remove the family name from one
of its wings. “While Purdue is going bankrupt in America, they are
promoting their drugs worldwide with their international arm, Mundi
Pharma,” Goldin says. Some weeks later, the museum quietly removed the
Sackler name, claiming that the funding agreement had expired.

Previously, the activists have staged similar “die-ins”
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as at the Freer-Sackler
Gallery in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, UK institutions including
the Met, the Tate, and the National Portrait Gallery in London have
publicly stated they would not accept further donations from the
Sackler foundations that are link to profits from the opioid drug.
The South London Gallery was the first to turn down a donation.

The post ‘I’m Anxious for It to Go to the Supreme Court’:
Why Nan Goldin Thinks the Latest Lawsuit Against the Sacklers Could
Be the Biggest Yet appeared first on artnet News.