Great moments in $800-an-hour-or-thereabouts lawyering: “As it turns out, a lawyer at Pepper Hamilton, one of two high-priced law firms negotiating the deal [for drugmaker Eli Lilly] with the government [over allegedly improper marketing of Zyprexa], mistakenly sent an e-mail containing a comprehensive and confidential document to a reporter at The New York Times. How could that have happened? The reporter, Alex Berenson, has the same last name as another lawyer who was supposed to have received the e-mail, Bradford Berenson, who works at Sidley Austin.” (Pharmalot, Feb. 5). Ted also has a (more serious) take at Point of Law on the problems with federal criminal enforcement of drug marketing laws.
But note correction Thurs. 12:30 EST: in updates, Beck/Herrmann and Pharmalot say that Portfolio mag, which originally reported this story, got aspects of it wrong: the email was a short one, not a comprehensive document, and reporter Berenson had other sources of information. Pepper Hamilton has been flogged up one side of the legal blogosphere and down the other for the slip, but Beck/Herrmann says that isn’t fair: the misdirected email doesn’t appear to have made much difference. Yet more: Ambrogi, Feb. 11 (initial report maybe not so wrong after all).
2 Comments
I can screw up for much cheaper.
unlikely that the handful of federal prosecutors working on the case have seen something the hundreds of plaintiffs’ attorneys reviewing the same documents have not; the effect on the civil cases will be more in terms of bad publicity than in substance –
but you forgot one thing, the PSC caved into Merck, and apparently is ok with the attempt to move the TORT system into “private” deals, where the litigants DO NOT receive proper, and in most cases, ANY legal representation, and an environment of confused, damaged client-attorney relationships run amuck!
—one thing you miss – apparently the PSC was outgunned, without a professional negotiator, byt he well armed Merck legal staff and sharp business people, that have been sanctioning shoddy, dangerous “oroducts” too make major short term profit to use for long term defense, and in the meantime, push for “private deals” which bring the “average” TORT case to abot 10-20% of what it should be.
A shameful era of perverted, corrupted, TORT reform, I which I have in the other BLOG, should you have the guts to POST either one.
Dennis Harrison – M.B.A. Beta Gamma Sigma
Pro Se – Bone and Spine healing
Harrison v Merck & Co, Inc. case, Civil Action No. 07-905
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MerckSettlement/