The legal odyssey for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners is complex. Here's what to know

abcnews.go.com:

The Supreme Court has rejected a settlement for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family who own the company

Members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma have been cast as prime villains in the U.S. opioid epidemic.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a deal for the company to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids through bankruptcy court. The deal was to be financed largely through the company being converted to a public benefits corporation, with profits being used to fight the opioid crisis, and the owners kicking in up to $6 billion for the same purpose.

But in a 5-4 ruling, the court rejected the plan because it would have extended protection from civil lawsuits to company owners who didn't seek bankruptcy protection themselves — and not all the parties agreed to that.

Here's a look at the family, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company the overdose crisis:

Deaths from opioids started rising in the years after the powerful prescription painkiller debuted in 1996.

The drug was marketed to doctors as having a low risk of addiction.

Deaths linked to prescription opioids, including OxyContin, which came in high dosages and in its original formulation was easily crushed to make it even stronger, rose rapidly until 2011 — when more controls were put on prescriptions and there were more crackdowns on illegal sales — and have fluctuated since then. When those leveled off, deaths from heroin started to skyrocket. And as heroin fatalities dropped in the late 2010s, there were a growing number of deaths linked to fentanyl and other potent, illicit, lab-produced opioids.

The number of U.S. overdose deaths from all drugs dropped last year for just the second time