Geoff Mulvihill

The nation’s three biggest drug distributors and a major drugmaker agreed to an 11th-hour, $260 million settlement Monday over the terrible toll taken by opioids in two Ohio counties, averting the first federal trial over the crisis. The trial, involving Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County and Akron’s Summit County, was seen as a critical test case that could have gauged the strength...

Negotiations aimed at reaching a major settlement in the nation’s opioid litigation reached an impasse Friday. Key differences were between state attorneys general and lawyers representing local governments, rather than with the drugmakers and distributors they are suing. One of the negotiators, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, said late Friday that local governments did not accept a deal worth...

A judge will halt lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and its owners for six months in hopes of finalizing a settlement over the OxyContin maker’s role in the national opioid crisis, he said Friday.

Victims of opioid addiction weren’t in the room when OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma persuaded half the state attorneys general to settle claims over the company’s role in the nationwide overdose epidemic. Now that Purdue is in federal bankruptcy court, four people whose lives were touched by addiction have important seats at the table — and could force fundamental changes to...

Attorneys general representing nearly half the states and lawyers for more than 500 local governments on Friday blasted the terms of Purdue Pharma’s offer to settle thousands of lawsuits over the nation’s opioid crisis in court filings that also said the company had funneled up to $13 billion to its controlling family. Their legal filings said the tentative deal does...

The tentative multibillion-dollar settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma would raise money to help clean up the opioid mess by … selling more OxyContin. That would amount to blood money, in the opinion of some critics. And it’s one reason two dozen states have rejected the deal. “The settlement agreement basically requires the settlement payments to be made based on...

Purdue Pharma gets its day in court Tuesday after the OxyContin maker filed for bankruptcy and negotiated a potential multi-billion dollar settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits. An initial hearing will be held in federal court in White Plains, New York, for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection late Sunday, the first step in a plan...

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners expressed sympathy but not responsibility for the nation’s opioid crisis as the company filed for bankruptcy protection late Sunday night, part of a move to settle some 2,600 lawsuits — most from state and local governments. “Like families across America, we have deep compassion for the victims of the opioid crisis,” Sackler family...

Attorneys for some 2,000 local governments say they have agreed to a tentative settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma over the toll of the nation’s opioid crisis.

A tentative settlement announced Wednesday over the role Purdue Pharma played in the nation’s opioid addiction crisis falls short of the far-reaching national settlement the OxyContin maker had been seeking for months, with litigation sure to continue against the company and the family that owns it. The agreement with about half the states and attorneys representing roughly 2,000 local governments...

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and lawyers representing local governments both said Sunday that they’re interested in continuing negotiations to settle lawsuits over the toll of the opioid crisis a day after two state attorneys general told colleagues that their talks with the company were at an impasse and that they expected the company to file imminently for bankruptcy. The statements...

“I think they are a group of sanctimonious billionaires who lied and cheated so they could make a handsome profit,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Shapiro said. “I truly believe that they have blood on their hands.”

With just a few months left before America starts taking its biggest-ever self-portrait, the U.S. Census Bureau is grappling with a host of concerns about the head count, including how to ensure that it is secure and accurate and the challenge of getting most people to answer questions online. All of that is on top of the main attention-grabber of...

The maker of OxyContin has been cast as the chief villain in the nation’s opioid crisis. But newly released government figures suggest Purdue Pharma had plenty of help in flooding the U.S. with billions of pills even as overdose deaths were accelerating. Records kept by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration show that 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills — the...

During his long career drawing legislative maps designed to help Republicans, Tom Hofeller preached about the dangers of leaving digital fingerprints. As he advised in a 2011 presentation about redistricting strategies: “Make sure your computer is in a PRIVATE location,” and “Don’t walk away from it and leave your work exposed.” But less than a year after his death, Hofeller’s...

In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for every state to legalize sports betting, a regional divide has opened as states decide whether to expand their gambling options. By year’s end, legalization is possible in a dozen states in the Northeast and Midwest. But most states in the Deep South and far West — SEC and...

In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for every state to legalize sports betting, a regional divide has opened as states decide whether to expand their gambling options. By year’s end, legalization is possible in a dozen states in the Northeast and Midwest. But most states in the Deep South and far West — SEC and...

It’s not just Democratic-leaning states at risk of losing federal money and clout in Congress if the Supreme Court says the upcoming census can include a citizenship question. Fast-growing Arizona, Florida and Texas all have large groups of immigrants, especially Hispanics, who might choose to sit out the census, but are led by Republicans who seem unconcerned about the potential...

A 50-state review of sports gambling legislation by The Associated Press reveals that legalization efforts are nonexistent or very unlikely to happen anytime soon in the nation’s three most populous states — Texas, California and Florida — which together hold more than a quarter of the U.S. population.

Football fans bet legally on the Super Bowl from states other than Nevada for the first time Sunday, with the excitement spreading from Las Vegas to as far as Rhode Island. Sunday’s big game was the first major sporting event for sportsbooks in a handful of states that opened after the U.S. Supreme Court in May struck down a ban...