The Boston Globe - 27.08.2019

C2 Business The Boston Globe TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019

succeed, he said, without MIT
and its support system nearby.
The longer these startups
can be persuaded to stay and
grow in Greater Boston, the
greater the likelihood that the
employees will put down roots
here, helping to ensure they
stick around.
The hope is to build a cluster
of startups tackling tough prob-
lems, one that is not limited to
businesses with MIT ties. Most
of the first 19 startups have
some links to the university, but
some do not.
“They’re highly transforma-
tive for their industries [but]
they were underserved by the
traditional financing methods

uMIT
Continued from Page C

and venture capitalists,” Ruiz

said.

One of the most common

challenges these kinds of start-

ups face is not enough space.

Companies that want to build

physical products need more

space than software firms —

and often that space has to be

equipped to meet their specific

needs.

“When you’re building out

labs, it’s not just like office

space,” Rae said. “You can’t just

flip a switch and have a new lab

open.”

Rae said the biggest Engine-

backed startup, based on em-

ployment numbers, is Com-

monwealth Fusion Systems,

which seeks to develop a viable

commercial method to generate

energy from fusion. The start-

ups in the Engine portfolio

tackle a wide range of problems

— such as reducing food waste,

improving the efficiency of bio-

logical labs, and using ultra-

sound to administer medicine

to patients.

The Engine’s venture fund

will wait up to 18 years before

exiting from an investment, a

much longer timeframe than

for a traditional VC fund, Rae

said. “Some of the... compa-

nies need that much time,” Rae

said. The kinds of technologies

they are tackling “are very hard

things to do, but if you do them,

they’re world-changing.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at

[email protected].

to 2017.
Hunter has called Johnson
& Johnson a ‘‘kingpin’’ compa-
ny that was motivated by
greed. He specifically pointed
to two former Johnson & John-
son subsidiaries, Noramco and
Tasmanian Alkaloids, which
produced much of the raw opi-
um used by other manufactur-
ers to produce the drugs.
‘‘They’ve been the principal
origin for the active pharma-
ceutical ingredient in prescrip-
tion opioids in the country for
the last two decades,’’ Hunter
said after the trial ended July

15. ‘‘It is one of the most im-
    portant elements of causation
    with regard to why the defen-
    dants... are responsible for
    the epidemic in the country
    and in Oklahoma.’’
    Attorneys for the company
    have maintained they were
    part of a lawful and heavily reg-
    ulated industry that was sub-
    ject to strict federal oversight,
    including by the Drug Enforce-
    ment Agency and the Food and
    Drug Administration, at every

uOPIOID SUIT
Continued from Page C

step of the supply chain.

Lead attorney Larry Ott-

away said during closing argu-

ments that opioid drugs serve a

critical health need: to address

the chronic pain that affects

thousands of Oklahomans ev-

ery day.

‘‘This problem of untreated

chronic pain afflicts people

here in Oklahoma,’’ Ottaway

said.

Oklahoma pursued the case

under the state’s public nui-

sance statute and presented

the judge with a plan to abate

the crisis that would cost be-

tween $12.6 billion for 20 years

and $17.5 billion over 30 years.

Attorneys for Johnson & John-

son have called those estimates

wildly inflated.

SUE OGROCKI/POOL PHOTO VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Judge Thad Balkman announced his decision in the state’s
lawsuit against J&J in Norman, Okla., on Monday.

Okla.judgesaysdrug

makermustpay$572m

forroleinopioidcrisis

AFP/GETTY IMAGES/FILE 2017

The drug maker argued that

many patients needed its

opioids for chronic pain.

By Andrew Joseph

and Casey Ross

STAT

FRANKFORT, Ky. — After a

3½-year legal battle, secret re-

cords about Purdue Pharma’s

marketing of its potent

opioid painkiller Oxy-

Contin will finally be

made public. The Kentucky Su-

preme Court denied a request

from Purdue to review lower

courts’ decisions to release the

documents, according to a one-

page order received Monday by

the lawyers in the case.

The decision is a victory for

STAT, which first filed a motion

to unseal the records in March

2016. Purdue has fought to
      keep the documents out of
      view, but the Supreme Court’s
      refusal is final and can’t be ap-
      pealed.
      Now, the public stands to get
      a glimpse of new information
      about how Purdue promoted
      OxyContin and what executives
      knew about the risk of addic-
      tion that came with the drug.
      The company’s aggressive mar-
      keting of OxyContin has been
      blamed by some analysts for
      helping trigger an opioid addic-
      tion epidemic. Overdoses relat-
      ed to prescription opioids have
      claimed 200,000 lives in the last
      two decades, and there are now
      nearly 100 opioid deaths every
      day in the United States, many
      from heroin and the synthetic
      opioid fentanyl.
      “The case against Purdue
      was one of our first decisions
      when we launched STAT, and
      we’re thrilled that the trove of
      documents will finally be made
      public,” said John W. Henry, the
      owner and publisher of STAT.
      “As the opioid crisis continues
      to devastate communities
      across the country, it is vital
      that we all have more answers
      to so many outstanding ques-
      tions about the genesis of the

epidemic and Purdue’s aggres-

sive marketing of OxyContin.”

A Purdue spokesperson did

not immediately comment.

When the files will be un-

sealed is uncertain. A deputy

court clerk said the documents

would be sent back to the trial

judge in Eastern Kentucky who

made the initial ruling in

STAT’s favor in May 2016. That

order unsealing the documents

was stayed pending the conclu-

sion of Purdue’s appeal. In his

original order, the judge wrote

that the records should be re-

leased after the court clerk re-

dacts any personal information,

such as addresses, Social Secu-

rity numbers, and telephone

numbers.

The records in the sealed

files also include e-mails and

other company documents

about marketing strategies; in-

ternal reports on clinical trials;

information about how sales

representatives hawked Oxy-

Contin; and communications

about earlier legal cases.

“Companies like Purdue

Pharma should not be allowed

as part of any settlement to sim-

ply seal information which

could be embarrassing to them

as a company and shed light on

less-than-savory activities” said

Jon Fleischaker, a Louisville,

Ky., attorney who represented

STAT in the case.

The cache also includes a

2015 deposition of Dr. Richard

Sackler, a onetime Purdue pres-

ident and a member of the fam-

ily that owns the company,

who, in other lawsuits, has

been depicted as a microman-

ager who pressured staff to in-

crease prescriptions of the com-

pany’s drugs. A copy of the de-

position was obtained earlier

this year by STAT and ProPubli-

ca and showed that Sackler in

the late 1990s did not aim to

correct the false belief among

doctors that OxyContin was

weaker than morphine because

the myth drove prescriptions.

Along with a detailed Massa-

chusetts complaint made pub-

lic earlier this year, the deposi-

tion made clear how involved

Sackler family members were

in devising the marketing plan

for OxyContin.

The records were gathered

as part of a lawsuit by the state

of Kentucky against Purdue

over its allegedly illegal market-

ing of OxyContin, which was

settled in 2015 with Purdue

agreeing to pay the state $

million.

As part of the settlement,

the state attorney general’s of-

fice agreed to destroy its copies

of 17 million pages of records

produced during the eight years

of litigation, but other copies of

someofthosefileswereplaced

under seal in a courthouse in

Pike County, in Eastern Ken-

tucky.

STAT filed a motion in

March 2016 to make the re-

cords public, a request that was

granted two months later by

Pike County Circuit Court

Judge Steven Combs. He wrote

then that “the court sees no

higher value than the public

[via the media] having access to

these discovery materials so

that the public can see the facts

for themselves.”

It wasn’t until last December

that a three-judge appellate

panel upheld Combs’s ruling.

When Purdue asked the state

Supreme Court to review the

case, the company argued that

the decision “guts litigants’ abil-

ity to rely on protective orders

and retroactively strips protec-

tive orders of any role in litiga-

tion.”

The Supreme Court’s order

denying discretionary review is

dated Aug. 21, but it won’t be

announced until this Thursday,

when the court will release its

August decisions.

Along with wholesalers,

pharmacies, and other opioid

makers, Purdue is a defendant

in some 2,000 lawsuits from

states, tribes, and local govern-

ments alleging that the compa-

nies unleashed and profited

from the opioid crisis. Most of

the suits have been bundled to-

gether in a federal case in Ohio.

In March, the Sacklers and

Purdue agreed to pay $270 mil-

lion to resolve a lawsuit

brought by the state of Oklaho-

ma.

Andrew Joseph can be reached

at

[email protected].

Casey Ross can be reached at

[email protected].

Jon Chesto

CHESTO MEANS

BUSINESS

After sitting across the nego-
tiating table from each other,
Raise Up Massachusetts and
Associated Industries of Massa-
chusetts gradually developed
what seemed like a friendly
working relationship.
Most notably, the former
foes put aside their differences
to work together on the rollout
of the state’s new paid family
and medical leave program.
But that relationship is be-
ing put to the test now. The rea-
son? The Raise Up coalition of
labor and activist groups sent a
letter last week to state law-
makers that accused Associated
Industries of Massachusetts
and other prominent business
groups of actively organizing to

avoid paying their fair share of

taxes. Them’s fighting words.

The letter’s insulting tone

took some in the business com-

munity by surprise.

Business groups are actively

discussing revenue sources to

improve the state’s rickety

transportation infrastructure.

Among the ideas: a gas tax in-

crease, new tolls, higher fees on

Uber and Lyft rides.

From Raise Up’s perspective,

these approaches tax everyday

working people. Raise Up sar-

castically noted in its Aug. 21

letter that “large, profitable cor-

porations and their lobbyists

... think they deserve a big
round of applause for letting
the rest of us pay higher taxes!”
Spokesman Andrew Farnita-
no says the letter arose from a
“collaborative process” ap-
proved by Raise Up’s steering
committee. That committee in-
cludes six union organizations
as well as several activist
groups and the progressive
business group Alliance for
Business Leadership.
The panel. he says, is con-
cerned businesses aren’t willing
todotheirpart,inparticular
with regard to transportation
and education funding. He
didn’t offer specific suggestions
for how companies can chip in
financially, other than to say

they should consider “corpo-

rate tax issues, corporate loop-

holes, tax incentive programs.”

Businesses, he says, should

come up with their own ideas.

The missive blindsided key

business leaders who worked

closely over many months with

Raise Up to negotiate the so-

called Grand Bargain package

of labor laws last year, the one

that set the new paid leave pro-

gram into motion.

The Massachusetts High

Technology Council was the

first to publicly strike back

against Raise Up’s latest letter,

referring to Raise Up as a “co-

alition of spending advocates

and public sector unions” in an

e-mail that went out on Sunday.

Vice president Mark Gallagher

says Raise Up ignores the fact

that state revenue collections

have grown by nearly $4 billion

in just two years.

While Mass. High Tech was

not part of the Grand Bargain

negotiations, the technology

group joined with AIM and

three other business organiza-

tions to fight Raise Up’s pro-

posed “millionaires tax” in

court. They succeeded at the

Supreme Judicial Court, but

that victory didn’t last. The tax

on high earners, dubbed the

“Fair Share Amendment,” has

been refiled in a way to avoid a

legal challenge and is now slat-

ed to go to the ballot in 2022.

Then AIM chief executive

John Regan wrote his own

“open letter” to Raise Up on

Monday, taking issue with the

assertion that businesses don’t

pay their fair share. He cited a

laundry list of numbers: $3.

billion in annual state taxes,

$4.9 billion in local property

taxes, nearly $2 billion for

workers’ comp insurance and

also for unemployment insur-

ance, to name just a few.

Tensions are running high

as we round the corner to fall,

when the House of Representa-

tives is slated to debate revenue

options to improve transporta-

tion in the state. Finding con-

sensus among the business

groups on that issue could be

tough. School funding is also

expected to come up on Beacon

Hill. And the potential Fair

Share Amendment, which pur-

portedly could raise $2 billion a

year for those two causes,

looms large. Farnitano says he

doesn’t think the letter will up-

set the relationships Raise Up

leaders have developed with

some of these business groups,

including AIM. The two sides,

he says, can continue to resolve

problems as they arise, like

they did on paid leave.

Maybe. But letters like this

won’t help. Like Raise Up, the

business groups have their own

constituentstoworryabout,

and some may wonder about

working politely with Raise Up

when the state’s business com-

munity gets treated like a

punching bag.

Jon Chesto can be reached at

[email protected]. Follow

him on Twitter @jonchesto.

Group’s letter tests relationship with business sector

GENSLER

An rendering offers a visualization of how renovations will turn the building into a

combination of chemistry and biology labs and fabrication and office space.

TheEnginewillofferstartupservicesatex-Polaroidbuilding

CourtclearswayforOxyContinfilesrelease

Purdue Pharma

loses final appeal

TOBY TALBOT/ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE 2013

Unsealed documents will address Purdue Pharma’s

marketing of its OxyContin painkiller.

LANE TURNER/GLOBE STAFF/FILE 2018

The Raise Up Massachusetts coalition, whose members are shown at a State House rally,

worked with the business community on the new paid family and medical leave program.

STAT