The Supreme Court vs. Tyranny, Inc.

The High Court Stops the Sacklers’ Last Dirty Trick

Can you take advantage of the benefits of bankruptcy—shielding your assets from lawsuits and collection attempts—without yourself going through the crucible of bankruptcy? You can’t if you’re Joe Schmoe. But you can shield your assets from aggrieved claimants if your last name is Sackler, and the so-called third-party release of your assets is a condition of your coughing up only a portion of your ill-gotten gains to help pay for the damage done to the American public by your disgraced drug company, Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin.

Or rather, the Sacklers could pull of this one neat trick—until Thursday, when a 5-4 majority of the US Supreme Court struck down the evil arrangement. The ruling is an important blow to one aspect of the system of privatized tyranny I describe in my book Tyranny, Inc.