Consulting giant McKinsey has reached a $573m settlement with US states over its work advising OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and other drug manufacturers to aggressively market opioid painkillers, according to people familiar with the matter. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the deal, reached with 47 states and the District of Columbia would avert civil lawsuits that attorneys general could bring against McKinsey. The majority of the money will be paid upfront, with the rest dispensed in four yearly payments starting in 2022.
McKinsey said last week it is cooperating with government agencies on matters related to its past work with opioid manufacturers, as state and local governments sue companies up and down the opioid supply chain.
At least 400,000 people have died in the US from overdoses of legal and illegal opioids since 1999, according to federal data.
The WSJ reports that the consulting firm stopped doing opioid-related work in 2019 and said in December its work for Purdue was intended to support the legal use of opioids and help patients with legitimate medical needs.
While some companies have reached deals with individual states to avoid trials, the WSJ reports that the McKinsey settlement marks the first nationwide opioid pact to come from the flood of litigation that began in 2017. A much larger, $26bn deal with three drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson has been in the works for more than a year but is still being negotiated.
The vast majority of the money McKinsey will pay in the settlement will be divided among the participating states, with $15m going to the National Association of Attorneys General to reimburse it for costs incurred in the investigation, one of the people familiar with the deal said.
The settlement also includes some non-monetary provisions, like requiring McKinsey to create a repository of documents related to its work for opioid makers, the WSJ reports.
[link url="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mckinsey-agrees-to-573-million-settlement-over-opioid-advice-11612405236"]Full Wall Street Journal report (Open access)[/link]