Drugmaker Purdue Pharma is negotiating a multibillion-dollar settlement with lawyers for local and state governments that would resolve about 2,000 lawsuits against the company, which would declare bankruptcy as part of the deal.

The Sackler family, which owns the company, would relinquish control and contribute at least $3 billion in personal funds to the settlement, which could total as much as $12 billion, according to three people familiar with the talks.

Leaders of the 2,000 plaintiffs in a consolidated lawsuit pending in federal court are seriously considering the offer, according to one person with knowledge of the negotiations. Another person familiar with the discussions said: “I think this is a last effort. If they don’t take this deal, [Purdue is] going to bankruptcy very quickly.”

The proposed deal, first reported Tuesday by NBC News, has been in the works for months, according to one person familiar with it, and was discussed at a meeting in Cleveland last week called by U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster, who oversees the sprawling federal lawsuit scheduled to get underway in mid-October.

Polster, who has encouraged the parties to settle rather than go to trial, told the parties to report back to him Friday, the person said.

Details about the talks come a day after an Oklahoma judge found health-care giant Johnson & Johnson responsible for fueling the state’s opioid epidemic and ordered it to pay $572 million to help abate the crisis.

In addition to Oklahoma, more than 40 other states have filed lawsuits in their own courts against Purdue and other companies in the pharmaceutical industry. The deal under discussion would cover the federal and state lawsuits, according to the people familiar with the proposal.

Purdue settled separately with Oklahoma for $270 million in March. In May, a North Dakota judge threw out that state’s lawsuit against the company.

Purdue is widely blamed for sparking the prescription opioid crisis in the United States with the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, followed by an aggressive marketing effort that persuaded doctors to prescribe it more widely and at higher doses.

In 2007, the company and three executives pleaded guilty to federal charges of misleading doctors and the public about the drugs. Purdue paid a $635 million fine.

Asked for comment Tuesday, Purdue said in a statement: “While Purdue Pharma is prepared to defend itself vigorously in the opioid litigation, the company has made clear that it sees little good coming from years of wasteful litigation and appeals.

“The people and communities affected by the opioid crisis need help now. Purdue believes a constructive global resolution is the best path forward, and the company is actively working with the state attorneys general and other plaintiffs to achieve this outcome.”

The company has made clear for months that it was considering bankruptcy in light of the liabilities it faced from hundreds of lawsuits. Another signal came in an Aug. 19 letter to former sales representatives, warning that “there exists the possibility that Purdue may not, or may not be able to, contribute enough to fully fund all of the retirement benefits that will become payable in the future under the Plan.”

The federal case is set to begin with two Ohio counties proceeding to trial as test cases. Polster has encouraged the plaintiffs to settle with some two dozen drug companies named in the lawsuits, and negotiations have occurred even as both sides readied for trial. State attorneys general were present, along with lawyers for the federal plaintiffs, at last week’s meeting, according to people familiar with it.

They said the company’s $7 billion in payments toward the settlement would come from a combination of sources, including insurance policies, cash, assets and Purdue’s remaining product inventory.

The company would declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy and restructure as a for-profit “public benefit trust,” with the Sacklers, who have owned Purdue since 1952, no longer in control, two people said. That trust would contribute to the settlement over a number of years by selling drugs such as OxyContin and non-opioids. A bankruptcy judge would choose the trustees.

The company also would provide anti-addiction medications such as buprenorphine, naloxone and nalmefene, a medication that has not been approved but has been fast-tracked by the FDA.

The Sacklers also would contribute $3 billion in personal funds to the settlement. That could grow by $1.5 billion if the family sells Mundipharma, an international drug company that it also owns.

The Sackler family paid itself nearly $4.3 billion from the sale of its drugs between 2008 and 2016, a Massachusetts lawsuit against the company claims.

Hostility toward the Sacklers has grown as emails and other documents released by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and others portray a company that pushed sales representatives to persuade doctors to prescribe more drugs to a wider group of people at higher doses, seemingly with little regard for patient safety. The company was led at the time by Richard Sackler.

The company has denied the allegations against it, and the Sackler family has said the Massachusetts lawsuit contains “misleading and inflammatory allegations” that took internal emails out of context.

But public protests against the Sacklers have been staged outside a number of cultural institutions bearing their name. The Louvre Museum in Paris said in mid-July that it had removed the Sackler name from its Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities as a result of outrage. Earlier, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, both in New York, and the Tate Modern in London announced they would no longer accept gifts from the family.

Dalton Bennett contributed to this report.

Read more:

Purdue Pharma CEO says bankruptcy is ‘an option’ as company faces opioid lawsuits

The biggest civil trial in U.S. history will start with these Ohio counties

76 billion opioid pills: Newly released federal data unmasks the epidemic

Attorney General William P. Barr is planning a holiday treat for his boss.

Last month, Barr booked President Trump’s D.C. hotel for a 200-person holiday party in December that is likely to deliver Trump’s business more than $30,000 in revenue.

Barr signed a contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, for a “Family Holiday Party” in the hotel’s Presidential Ballroom Dec. 8. The party will feature a buffet and a four-hour open bar for about 200 people.

Barr is paying for the event himself and chose the venue only after other hotels, including the Willard and the Mayflower, were booked, according to a Justice Department official. The official said the purpose of Barr’s party wasn’t to curry favor with the president.

Barr holds the bash annually, and it combines holiday festivities and a ceilidh, a party featuring Irish or Scottish music.

“Career ethics officials were consulted, and they determined that ethics rules did not prohibit him from hosting his annual party at the Trump hotel,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the party is not a Justice Department event.

Barr’s decision to book his boss’s hotel marks the latest collision between Trump’s administration and his business, which the president no longer operates but from which he still benefits financially.

Trump said Monday that he was likely to hold next year’s Group of Seven international summit at his golf resort in Doral, Fla. Already the federal government and GOP campaigns have spent at least $1.6 million at his properties since he entered office, according to a Post analysis, though the actual figure is likely to be higher because of the difficulty of obtaining up-to-date records.

[Trump sings the praises of his resort in Florida as possible G-7 host for 2020]

Barr, the nation’s top law enforcement official, has previously faced criticism for adopting language that hews closely to Trump’s. For example, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III complained that Barr’s characterization of his investigation — which closely mirrored the president’s — “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s final report. Experts have cited that and other examples in questioning Barr’s independence from the president.

“It creates the appearance that high-level political appointees or allies of the president may feel like they need to spend money at the president’s businesses as a show of loyalty, and that is something that makes me deeply uncomfortable and should make taxpayers deeply uncomfortable,” said Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

The Trump Organization declined to comment. Representatives from the Willard Hotel declined to comment, citing the company’s privacy policy. A spokeswoman for the Mayflower Hotel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Barr’s decision to book the Trump hotel is noteworthy, in particular, because Justice Department attorneys are defending the president’s business in court. Trump’s D.C. hotel has hosted a number of foreign governments as clients, business that has generated two lawsuits, one from the attorneys general of Maryland and D.C. and the other from about 200 Democratic members of Congress.

[What Attorney General Barr said vs. what the Mueller report said]

Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics who has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s ethics record, called Barr’s decision to book Trump’s hotel “one of those things that doesn’t violate the rules, but it’s really troubling.”

“He keeps sending signals that his loyalty is to a politician and not to the country,” Shaub said. “And it’s part of an ongoing erosion of credibility at the Department of Justice.”

It’s difficult to determine whether Barr will pay market rate for the event, as the Justice Department official asserted he would. The contract, sent to Barr at his Northern Virginia home, calls for a minimum of $100 per person for food and beverage before adding 35 percent for taxes and tip. It requires that Barr pay at least $31,500, even if he cancels the event.

The hotel’s publicly available menu lists a “banquet dinner” as costing $115 per person for two hours plus $30 for each additional hour. A hosted bar costs $29 for the first hour per person and an additional $12 per hour for each additional hour. If Barr opts for that level of service at those prices, the food and beverage bill for 200 guests would probably top $45,000.

Hotels typically have lots of available space on Sunday nights, leading them to offer less expensive rates. A contract the hotel signed with Virginia Women for Trump for a Monday event in the summer of 2018, obtained separately by The Post, required a $3,050 room rental fee and a $39,000 banquet fee for a much larger group, 818 people, though it did not include an open bar.

Hempowicz said that if Barr receives a discount from the hotel, it would give other Americans dealing with the Justice Department reason for concern, whomever the party is for.

“If the attorney general gets a discount while the Justice Department defends the hotel in court, that is not how the justice system is supposed to work and it’s not how the Department of Justice is supposed to work,” she said.

Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.