While pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was trying to quietly negotiate a $1 billion settlement with the government, one of its outside counsel was accidentally emailing details of the arrangement to the New York Times. Oops.
Lilly and federal prosecutors are hammering out a deal where the pill pusher will settle charges that it illegally marketed schizophrenia drug Zyprexa – suggesting doctors prescribe it for "off label," or non-FDA approved, purposes, which is a big no-no – and were keen on keeping everything under wraps until they could draft a carefully-worded press release once all parties had signed on the dotted line.
And then an attorney at Philadelphia's Lilly-retained Pepper Hamilton law firm erroneously emailed confidential info to a one "Alex Berenson," who happens to work at the Times, when it was meant for "Bradford Berenson," co-counsel at Sidley Austin.
Naturally, Eli Lilly's camp thought it was federal investigators who leaked info to the press. They were wrong, of course. But they're keeping Pepper Hamilton on the case. So you can see where their thinking lies.
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Editorial Director
What gets me is how they could ever blunder this Zyprexa scandal so badly.
I am just one claimant that they have stonewalled and have consequently put up nearly 30,000 pages denouncing the injustice.
Pay up the claims!Daniel Haszard http://www.zyprexa-victims.com
That's hysterical. You would think they would be more careful considering what is at stake here.
I don't think that it was an oops mistake, i think that it was very well orchesrated, how else were they going to let the public know, that O!yeh the government is now really involved when they should have been involved long before now, who is running this country anyway? drug giants or the government?