With $2,300 Phone Calls, Purdue Runs Up Huge Bankruptcy Tab
- Professional costs are more than half compensation for victims
- Top guns on high-profile case: ‘Those people are expensive’
Photographer: George Frey/Bloomberg
One phone call with the Department of Justice: $2,300. Two days at the Ritz-Carlton: $830. Oh, and a lengthy cab ride to and from the court in White Plains, New York -- that’ll be $1,000.
Those are just some of the almost $400 million of fees and expenses racked up by professionals working the bankruptcy of Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma LP. The bills add up to more than half the amount that all individuals harmed by OxyContin would share under the drugmaker’s proposed settlement of personal injury claims.
Purdue’s financial woes have turned into a cash machine for the lawyers and consultants hired by the company and its creditors who are sorting through claims that the drugmaker fanned the flames of the U.S. opioid crisis. White-shoe law firms, premier restructuring advisers and investment bankers are collecting thousands of dollars an hour for their work on the case while those hurt by Purdue’s products await a payout -- as is the norm in corporate bankruptcy.