The recipients of the settlement are mixed about this. Some raised this suit because they felt the Sacklers were not sufficiently punished. Others felt that this was likely to be the best deal that could realistically achieved and dragging out proceedings in court for years and adding uncertainty of any settlement or victorious law suit was not worth the risks and emotional turmoil.
It's a settlement. That means that both sides give something up.
The Sacklers would have to be complete morons(indeed, self-destructive morons) to have a settlement that did not include legal immunity, because otherwise they will get sued again and again and again. "Sure, we will give you this money and then someone else can file a lawsuit against us later" is not a stance you can reasonably expect out of anyone.
Instead, we ought to be asking "Why settle?" If you want to understand what's going on instead of feeding the outrage beast that the media has been nurturing in you for the last couple of decades, ask that question. And it's a good question: if it is such a slam-dunk, why did the government say, "Sure, we'll settle?"
Possible answers -- ones that someone could maybe do something about -- would include "Because the lawyers would eat up all of the money" and "There was a payoff to the right parties" and "The government wants the money now instead of later" (this one can be thrown out given the fine repayment period) and "the government feared losing its case." Feel free to add more.
It's a lot more constructive than being pointlessly angry.
But now that the ruling potentially exposes the Sacklers directly, they have much more incentive to negotiate a new settlement. If the plaintiff's attorneys are clever, they will leverage this to come to a quick settlement of approximately the same amount, with the threat that delays will bring demands for higher amounts.
Basically, the original judge did a good job - the settlement plan was reasonable and widely popular. And the Sackler family being released from liability by putting billions of personal dollars into the payment fund meant more victims would get more money immediately.
With this ruling, the Sacklers are personally legally liable again - which may make you or I more happy, but this means that victims have to pursue a much harder and more expensive set of lawsuits to get money from the Sackler family. It also means the victims of the deal don't get a voice in the proceedings, and it may also make future payouts and bankruptcies harder if there is no reason to cooperate with the state.
I was simplifying a very complex process. One way to look at it is the Sacklers had a $15 billion fortune and they threatened to burn all of it fighting for decades in court. Alternatively they offered $5 billion to settle and prevent civil lawsuits, retaining 2/3 of their fortune.
The calculus for politicians is to take the quick win and the cash, or let someone else 30 years later get the victory while potentially taking heat now.
Whatever happened I still prefer this system to the “you said something that made me angry, 20 years hard labor followed by execution for you!” style of justice.
Victory is not guaranteed, and even if the victims do win, going to court takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. The victims agreed to the settlement because they preferred that option to going to court.
The settlement is meant to be punitive, not necessarily amount to a windfall for you. It's not terribly easy in a case like this to even prove damages.
And no, it wouldn't be better to let them off the hook completely. I'm not saying this settlement is _at all_ satisfying, but c'mon.
The settlement could also be low because the lawyers on the plaintiff side were not acting in the best interests of the people they were representing, just in their own best interests.
The fact that this settlement was rejected by the judge should be an embarrassment for the plaintiffs' lawyers, and IMO is a great example of the problems with the incentives in class action settlements. Basically, the judge is saying there is substantial evidence that the plaintiffs would win considerably more if the case went to trial. From the lawyers' perspective though, if they settle they get a sure thing, and, importantly, they don't have to do any more work.
So in other words, if this settlement had been approved, the employees would have gotten a raw deal, while their attorneys would have gotten tens of millions for poor work on a pretty clear cut case.
The question is whether to allow a smaller settlement immediately, or pursue a less-likely and possibly larger set of judgements in the future. It's not clear that it is possible to get more money out of them.
From the bit of googling I did, the suits appear to be settled. People seem to take considerably settlement checks as an implicit indicator of some truth. Granted there's probably more to the story.
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