# Harrington v. Purdue Pharma **Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P.**, 603 U.S. ___ (2024), is the **June 27, 2024** Supreme Court decision that rejected the [[Purdue Pharma]] Chapter 11 reorganization plan's nondebtor third-party release of the [[Sackler Family]] from civil opioid liability — collapsing the original $6B settlement, forcing a six-month bankruptcy renegotiation, and producing the larger and immunity-stripped 2025 settlement. ## The Question Whether the US Bankruptcy Code authorizes a Chapter 11 reorganization plan to include a **nonconsensual release** of legal claims that nondebtor claimants hold against **nondebtor third parties** — here, the Sackler family, who had never themselves filed for bankruptcy but who, under the Purdue plan, would obtain immunity from worldwide opioid civil claims in exchange for paying $6B+ into the bankruptcy estate. ## The Holding **5–4: No.** The Bankruptcy Code does not authorize nonconsensual nondebtor releases. A plan that includes one cannot be confirmed. ## The Majority **Justice [[Neil Gorsuch]]** wrote the majority opinion, joined by **Justices [[Clarence Thomas]], [[Samuel Alito]], [[Amy Coney Barrett]], and [[Ketanji Brown Jackson]]** — a cross-ideological alignment that is remarkable in modern Supreme Court terms. The Gorsuch-Thomas-Alito-Barrett conservatives joined with Jackson (the Court's most recent Democratic appointee) against an ideologically mixed dissent. Gorsuch's core argument: a Chapter 11 debtor obtains a discharge of debt liability through a "simple bargain" — the debtor puts "virtually all of its assets" on the table in exchange for the discharge. The Sacklers did not do this. They retained billions of dollars in pre-bankruptcy wealth transfers and other family-controlled assets while seeking to extinguish opioid claims against themselves through Purdue's bankruptcy. The Code does not contain affirmative authorization for that outcome. ## The Dissent **Justice [[Brett Kavanaugh]]** wrote the dissent, joined by **Chief Justice [[John Roberts]] and Justices [[Sonia Sotomayor]] and [[Elena Kagan]]**. The dissent's pragmatic argument: opioid victims will be worse off when the settlement infrastructure collapses; the bankruptcy court's nondebtor release is a workable compromise across thousands of plaintiffs; statutory authority for such releases has been read into the Code by lower courts for decades. ## Consequences - The Purdue Pharma Chapter 11 plan collapses on June 27, 2024. - Six months of bankruptcy mediation produce the revised $7.4B framework (announced January 24, 2025). - The Sacklers pay **more** ($6.5B vs. $6B) over 15 years. - The Sacklers do **not** receive immunity from future opioid lawsuits — opt-in plaintiffs settle, but opt-out plaintiffs retain rights to sue individual family members. - November 14, 2025 — bankruptcy judge confirms the revised plan. - Beyond Purdue, the ruling closes the door on a class of bankruptcy strategies that high-net-worth-individual defendants in mass-tort cases (asbestos, Boy Scouts of America abuse, Catholic dioceses, gun-manufacturer suits, etc.) had been using to convert corporate bankruptcies into individual immunity. The legal-academic consensus as of late 2025 is that *Harrington* is the most consequential mass-tort bankruptcy decision in decades. ## Significance for the KB *Harrington* is the moment at which a wealthy family's plan to use a corporate bankruptcy as a personal-liability shield was decisively rejected by the Supreme Court — and where Gorsuch and Jackson, from opposite ideological wings, agreed on the principle that bankruptcy discharge requires "putting your assets on the table." The cross-ideological alignment is itself notable: this is not a case where the conservative or liberal wing of the Court delivered an expected ideological outcome. It is a case about the textual limits of the Bankruptcy Code. ## See Also - [[Purdue Pharma]] — the bankruptcy - [[Sackler Family]] — the third-party beneficiaries the ruling stripped of protection - [[Opioid Crisis Timeline]] — Era 6 detail - [[OxyContin]] — the underlying product driving the litigation