At any one time, NPR's Brian Mann is probably following about a dozen legal proceedings.

All of them seeking some kind of accountability for the opioid crisis.

But none of them, quite like the hearing he went to a couple weeks back.

This was in bankruptcy court, it was over Zoom.

What made it remarkable were the two dozen people giving searing testimony about the way

addiction had upended their lives.

And let me just say, bankruptcy courts don't usually do things like this.

This is not a normal thing in bankruptcy court to have victim testimony, like you might

have in a criminal case or in some civil cases.

But this judge said this felt right to me.

And as part of the agreement, three members of the Sackler family did agree to sit through

it and to watch it and listen as these families held up photographs of the dead and talked

about what they'd lost.

It was powerful and heart-wrenching.

To the people testifying, the billionaire Sackler family is a bunch of high-end drug dealers.

Executives who led Purdue Pharma as that company aggressively marketed oxycontin.

And doctors offices and hospital awards all over the country.

One parent forced the court to listen to a 911 call that still haunts her.

In it, she'd just found her son dead from an overdose.

One of the things that kept being said by these family members over and over again is that

you, members of the Sackler family, deliberately tried to label people with addiction as criminals,

as the problem.

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