Mallinckrodt Settlement Payout Per Person: Amount, Timing, Deadline

Individual payouts from the Mallinckrodt settlement have been small. Attorneys representing claimants have reported that after deductions, per-person payments from the Mallinckrodt Opioid Personal Injury Trust have run between about $400 and $700, with at least one Maine claimant reporting a single check of $324.58.¹² There is no fixed per-person figure. The trust calculates awards using a point system whose dollar value the trustee sets based on available funds and the number of approved claims, and that value is not publicly disclosed.³

What Determines Your Payment Amount

Approved claims are sorted into tiers, and each tier is worth a set number of points:

Tier 1 base payment, 5,000 points: for claimants who used a qualifying Mallinckrodt or SpecGx opioid for six months or more. The months do not need to be consecutive.
Tier 1 Level A payment, 10,000 points: for Tier 1 claimants who can also show that an opioid caused a death, supported by a death certificate along with toxicology or autopsy evidence.
Tier 2 base payment, 3,000 points: for claimants who used a qualifying opioid for fewer than six months or who otherwise do not meet Tier 1 requirements. Tier 2 claimants receive only the base payment.³

Qualifying injuries include addiction, opioid use disorder, withdrawal, overdose, and time in rehabilitation. Selecting “jail” on its own does not qualify; it must be paired with another listed injury.⁴ The trust compensates only for general pain and suffering. Economic damages, punitive damages, and statutory enhanced damages are excluded.³

The dollar value assigned to each point can be adjusted over time as the trustee updates estimates of current and future claims. If the value goes up after you have already been paid, the trust issues a supplemental payment, but only when the difference exceeds $100.⁴

Why the Checks Are So Small

Two forces push the individual number down: deductions from each check, and a shrunken pool of money split among tens of thousands of people.

On the deduction side, roughly 25 percent of a claimant’s award goes to the national trust to cover administrative costs, and attorney fees typically take another 40 percent.² That is why the pre-deduction award and the check that arrives can look very different.

On the fund side, Mallinckrodt originally agreed in 2020 to pay $1.6 billion into an opioid settlement trust over eight years.⁵ After the company’s second bankruptcy in August 2023, the obligation was restructured to $700 million total: a $450 million payment on the plan’s effective date in June 2022, plus a $250 million payment in August 2023.⁶ That money is split among several downstream trusts, only one of which pays individuals, and the Personal Injury Trust has received roughly 37,000 claims.⁷

The gap between individual and government recovery is wide. State and local governments have collectively received more than $10 billion from opioid settlements across all defendants, while individuals in the few bankruptcies that carved out personal funds are often walking away with a few hundred dollars.¹ In one Maine example, Cumberland County alone had already received more than $700,000 in government settlement funds while an individual victim in the same state received $324.58.²

Not everyone who applies is paid. Of about 20,000 people who contacted one Nebraska firm about opioid bankruptcies, only around 3,500 successfully filed claims. Others could not obtain medical records from closed pharmacies and doctors’ offices, or missed filing deadlines.¹

When Payments Are Being Made

As of early 2025, Mallinckrodt was the only opioid manufacturer that had begun paying individual victims through its bankruptcy.¹ The Personal Injury Trust is working through its 37,000 claims on a first-in, first-out basis. Approved claims that have cleared the lien resolution process are being paid, and the trust anticipates that most approved claims will be paid by the end of 2026.⁷

Processing has run slower than originally expected. The trust points to the volume of submissions and the fallout from Mallinckrodt’s second bankruptcy as the main causes.⁷ If you are represented by an attorney, all information about award amounts, release documents, and payment status is routed through your law firm. Unrepresented claimants get updates by mail.

A Note on the Filing Deadline

The window to file a personal injury claim with the trust closed on June 15, 2025, for both non-NAS and NAS claims. Claims not filed by that date are permanently barred.⁷ If you filed by the deadline, your payment is subject to the tier, deduction, and timeline mechanics above. If you did not file, the trust is not a source of recovery from Mallinckrodt.

1
CBS News. Opioid Victims Settlements Governments Millions
2
KFF Health News. Opioid Settlements Payouts Overdoses Addiction Database
3
Massachusetts Attorney General. Personal Injury Trust Distribution Procedures
4
MNK PI Trust. Non-NAS PI Claim FAQs
5
The New York Times. Mallinckrodt Opioid Settlement
6
Opioid Master Disbursement Trust. Mallinckrodt FAQs
7
MNK PI Trust. Mallinckrodt Opioid Personal Injury Trust