The four top legal department leaders overseeing a new $26 billion opioid settlement are longtime veterans of their companies, with their tenure stretching back to some of the underlying corporate conduct at issue and in the early days of settlement negotiations. And the four likely had a heavy hand in crafting the final proposal.

The proposed settlement, which would end about 4,000 lawsuits across the country over the opioid epidemic, entails payments over the course of 18 years, including drug distributors AmerisourceBergen paying $6.4 billion, Cardinal Health paying $6.4 billion and McKesson paying $7.9 billion. Drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson would pay $5 billion over the course of nine years.