Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, revolutionized the opioid industry through aggressive marketing tactics that encouraged the widespread use of prescription painkillers.

That part, by now, is well known, as an out-of-control opioid epidemic ravages a generation of young people with such potency that it has dragged down the overall life expectancy of the American people. What has not been previously revealed is that as the death toll mounted, officials at the company attempted to work behind-the-scenes to make it less likely that they could ever be successfully prosecuted for the carnage opioids were unleashing.

Executives in multiple industries have long been kept up at night by knowledge of the looming power of the Responsible Corporate Office, or RCO doctrine, also known as the Park doctrine, a legal liability standard used largely to prosecute executives at companies responsible for affecting public health and safety. Under the Park doctrine, federal prosecutors could target senior executives and board members of opioid pharmaceutical companies for their role in the sprawling epidemic if violations of criminal law were proved true, regardless of whether they could prove knowledge or motivation.

Purdue helped to quietly finance an effort to unravel that doctrine, according to people with knowledge of the company’s activity.

Executives at Purdue were once charged using the corporate office doctrine in 2007, in a case that found that the company had “misbranded” its drugs as less likely to be abused than other narcotics. The company agreed to pay a settlement of $634.5 million. A growing number of state and local prosecutors, however, believe that the company simply shifted tactics after the settlement, and could again face liability for continuing to downplay the dangers of its opioid products using sophisticated marketing campaigns that targeted the medical community and patient advocacy groups.