ThePopTort

Merck Pleads Guilty While Its CEO Investigates Penn State – What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Say what you will about Merck, the drug company responsible for putting the killer arthritis drug Vioxx on the market, but one thing is no longer debatable: Merck is a corporate criminal.  Yesterday, the company pled guilty to a misdemeanor for its illegal promotional and marketing of Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis and agreed to pay $950 million to resolve criminal charges and civil claims related to its promotion and marketing of the drug (off label marketing, false statements).  That includes a $321,636,000 criminal fine.  The money will go to both the federal government and a number of cash-strapped states that lost precious Medicaid funds due to Merck’s misconduct.  And the company agreed to federal “ongoing monitoring of Merck’s conduct … to deter and detect similar conduct in the future.”

Merck, you may recall (and as recently described by NPR reporter Snigdha Prakash in Slate), sold Vioxx for about five and a half years,

knowing the drug doubled the risk of cardiovascular problems among users, but it did not tell doctors or patients. Instead, it pursued an active disinformation campaign—telling doctors that Vioxx was safer for the heart than older painkillers (it was not), squashing university scientists who dared to dissent, and withholding clinical trial results that would have definitively proven Vioxx’s risks to federal regulators. In late 2004, after the weight of the evidence became impossible to deny, Merck abruptly pulled Vioxx from the market.

According to the Justice Department,

The settlement resolves allegations that Merck representatives made inaccurate, unsupported, or misleading statements about Vioxx’s cardiovascular safety in order to increase sales of the drug, resulting in payments by the federal government.   It also resolves allegations that Merck made false statements to state Medicaid agencies about the cardiovascular safety of Vioxx, and that those agencies relied on Merck’s false claims in making payment decisions about the drug.   Finally, like the criminal plea, the civil settlement also recovers damages for allegedly false claims caused by Merck’s unlawful promotion of Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis.…

“When a pharmaceutical company ignores FDA rules aimed at keeping our medicines safe and effective, that company undermines the ability of health care providers to make the best medical decisions on behalf of their patients,” said Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice.  

So guess who Penn State has asked to conduct its own “full and complete” investigation into the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal?  Merck's chairman and CEO Kenneth C. Frazier – the very guy widely credited with Merck’s scorched-earth legal strategy against dead and injured Vioxx victims.  Prakash, whose book about Vioxx is called All the Justice Money Can Buy, wrote in Slate,

Frazier, then the company’s general counsel, declared Merck had done nothing wrong and refused to settle. “We’ll fight every case,” he declared, and hired top-flight law firms in several East Coast cities, in the South, in Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well as a prominent New York firm to coordinate the overall strategy. It took three years and $2 billion in legal expenses for Frazier’s hard-nosed tactics to pay off. Merck settled in late 2007 for a relative pittance, resolving some 50,000 Vioxx cases for just under $5 billion. It was a far cry from the $25 billion to $50 billion in liability that analysts had predicted when Merck withdrew the drug.…

At Merck, they were protecting a multibillion dollar drug. At Penn State, they were protecting a football program that brings in $70 million per year, confers prestige on the university and supports jobs with important titles and big paychecks.

Prakash summed it up this way: Kenneth C. Frazier “is a man with a track record of protecting powerful institutions from the consequences of their inaction. … Neither institution fulfilled its responsibilities, with devastating consequences for those on the outside."

And now, at least one of them is a criminal.

Wisconsin Immunity for Killer Propofol (And Other Unsafe Drugs and Devices)?

You might be happy to know that the FDA just approved Teva's new antipsychotic drug called Olanzapine, otherwise known as the generic Zyprexa.  Let’s just hope the FDA knows what it’s doing.  Zyprexa, you may know, has serious side-effects that can lead to  diabetes and its manufacturer, Eli Lilly, has been sued by tens of thousands of ill Zyprexa users, telling salespeople to downplay these side effects.  You can read more about this in the Center for Justice & Democracy’s new study, Repeating a Tragic Blunder, about a disastrous drug and medical device immunity bill now being considered in Wisconsin.  (Read more here.)

Actually, if you live in Wisconsin or Michigan for that matter, you had really better hope the FDA knows what it’s doing.  As the CJ&D study explains, Michigan's law – and the Wisconsin bill – would completely immunize drug companies like Teva (not to mention Eli Lilly) for marketing unsafe government-approved drugs that kill or injure patients.  

It’s not like there isn’t reason to be very concerned about a company like Teva.  As Bloomberg reports, Nevada juries have recently imposed punitive damages three times against Teva and two other drug companies for selling the anesthetic Propofol to doctors in bottles so large that they needed to be reused, leading colonoscopy patients to develop Hepatitis C, which can be lethal.  (Yes, THAT Propofol.  Between this and what we’re learning about Propofol in the Michael Jackson case, like MJ’s nurse who just testified “nobody who cares or has your best interests at heart will give you Propofol,” it’s hard to imagine a more maligned drug in the news right now!) 

When Michigan passed its drug immunity law in the 1990s, the drug companies immediately skipped town and all those promised jobs were lost.  Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry has had a “get out of jail free” card there ever since while sick and injured patients are kicked to the curb.  Beats us as to why anyone would support such a thing.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a venture capitalist who, as the New York Times reports today, is dumping boatloads of money on politicians with the goal of weakening FDA regulation even further. Writes the Times,

As Congress considers reauthorizing a law that sets the fees for medical device makers, venture capitalists are emerging as a rich and influential ally of device companies eager to remove what they say are regulatory roadblocks in the approval process. The push has alarmed patient advocates and some doctors, who have been calling on the F.D.A. to intensify its oversight of devices, particularly in light of some all-metal artificial hips that are failing prematurely at an unusually high rate.

“They have this unwritten assumption that every new device is innovative,” Dr. Rita Redberg, who is the editor of the Archives of Internal Medicine, said, referring to the venture capital funds. But some devices, she said, “are killing people or causing significant harm.”

What a time to be throwing immunity into the mix.

Immunity That The Good Wife Never Saw Coming

Did you happen to catch the TV show The Good Wife over the weekend? (Full episode here.) “Straight from the headlines” doesn’t half describe it, and I’m not even talking about the listeria-outbreak subplot given what’s gong on with cantaloupes these days (although this story dealt with processed cheese, which seems somehow more fitting for show about food poisoning.) 

But the main plot dealt was something equally timely, and kudos to them for tackling it - i.e., the FDA’s highly controversial 510(k) process, which allows manufacturers to put certain medical devices on the market if they submit evidence that the device is “substantially equivalent” to a device already on the market   (See Public Citizen’s study on this.) In the show, a spinal cord stimulator – a medical device used to ease chronic pain - was implanted in a patient, a young mother.  Turns out that the manufacturer and inventor of the device was the patient’s doctor and he made boatloads of money every time he implanted one.  Are these writers clairvoyant or what?  Just last week, the Wall St. Journal published a large investigative piece about spine surgeons who do this very thing, writing:

Rather than use spinal implants from third-party manufacturers, scores of surgeons have started their own device makers to churn out similar designs, putting themselves in a position to benefit financially from the hardware they insert into patients. 

And just like real life, this Good Wife doctor never put the device through the more rigorous FDA approval process (with clinical trial data) because he paid some “experts” to say the device was “substantially equivalent” to a device already on the market.  Writes the WSJ:

The Food and Drug Administration has a less stringent approval process for medical devices nearly identical to ones on the market. Surgeons only have to submit mechanical-testing data attesting that their implants are "substantially equivalent" to existing ones. The FDA usually gives its green light within 90 days.

But like many of these 510(k) devices, this one was defective, it malfunctioned and as a result, the patient was permanently injured.  And she sued.

Ironically and as we’ve pointed out many times (here, here ), had the device actually gone through a pre-market approval process, this lawsuit probably would have been impossible.  Device manufacturer are completely immune from all responsibility for putting unsafe Class III (i.e. high-risk) devices on the market (yes, plenty of unsafe devices are FDA-approved) and the writers would have had to come up with a whole different storyline.

Actually, here is one new storyline that’s not so different.  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, not satisfied just with targeting abused and neglected nursing home residents, now wants to do to his residents what Michigan politicians did to theirs almost two decades ago (and which no other state has since replicated).  They want to prevent any Wisconsin citizen who is injured by any FDA-approved unsafe drug or device, from ever getting compensated by the negligent drug company.  As The Cap Times wrote:

For 15 years Michigan residents and families of loved ones who have been injured or killed by drugs like Rezulin, Accutane and Vioxx have tried to get their day in court. But they've largely been stymied by a state law that shields drug makers from legal liability.

Even the state itself, seeking to recover millions in Medicaid dollars spent on ailments caused by Vioxx, was prevented from doing so by its own appeals court.

Michigan passed the law in 1995, and it remains the only state in the nation with such sweeping legal immunity for drug makers.

But Wisconsin Republicans want to enact similar legislation that would shield drug makers from lawsuits over FDA-approved drugs. And the proposal here would go further, including immunity for makers of FDA-approved medical devices like automatic external defibrillators, heart valves and artificial hips. They also would be granted immunity from lawsuits if their products had inadequate warnings.

"If this becomes law, all of those people who are injured, or the families of people who die, will just be SOL," says Mike End, the president of the trial lawyers group Wisconsin Association for Justice.

Even the conservative U.S. Supreme Court has said that immunizing drug companies is a very bad idea  All I have to say is, we once warned Hollywood about great legal class action storylines drying up because of the way our class action system is being decimated.  They had better start paying attention to this one, too.

Drug Company Triggers Migraines and Not Much Relief

Here is how the Mayo clinic describes migraine headaches:

A migraine headache can cause intense throbbing or pulsing in one area of the head and is commonly accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound. Migraine attacks can cause significant pain for hours to days and be so severe that all you can think about is finding a dark, quiet place to lie down.

Put it this way.  Migraine sufferers don’t need any more grief in their lives.  But it turns out, one pharmaceutical company, which should be figuring out how to help these folks, decided to make things worse for them by lying about a treatment that never worked, just so they could cash in on the migraine market.

Yesterday, the U.S. subsidiary of Belgian manufacturer UCB, which manufactures the epilepsy treatment Keppra, agreed "to pay more than $34 million for marketing the medication to treat migraine headaches in violation of U.S. drug laws.”  It also pleaded guilty “to a misdemeanor in connection with the misbranding. … The federal government will get $15.8 million of the civil settlement and nearly $10 million will go to state Medicaid programs.”  Writes the New York Times, “The case is among scores of whistle-blower complaints that the Justice Department has brought in recent years against pharmaceutical companies for illegal marketing.”

Wanna know what they did?

UCB prepared business plans that recognized the market for off-label uses of Kempra “offered a much higher sales potential than the epilepsy market,” the document states. At the time, UCB was being outspent by competitors who were aggressively pursuing off-label business, according to prosecutors.

UCB’s marketing included sponsorship of doctor-paid “studies,” posters, publications and oral presentations about the supposed benefits of using Keppra to treat migraines. Prosecutors said UCB failed to disclose that a 2000 study showed that Keppra was not effective in preventing migraine….

“UCB put its pursuit of profits ahead of its obligations to patients,” Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in an e-mailed statement. “Today’s guilty plea and UCB’s $34 million payout should remind drug companies that try to cleverly design off-label marketing schemes that we will not allow them to compromise patient safety.”

Really?  A misdemeanor plea will do that?  Paying a $34 million penalty, when the company made $1.37 billion in sales last year from this drug alone? 

Excuse my cynicism, but I think a little more “deterrence” may be needed here.  Any defrauded migraine sufferers out there?

Tort Reform Hypocrite John Boehner … Here We Go Again!

It takes a special kind of guy (or former Alaska Governor) to make it on to our esteemed “Hypocrites of Tort Reform” list.  This is especially true for the “politico” brand of civil justice hypocrite: politicians who run to court to exercise their own constitutional rights, while at the same time championing severe liability restrictions for everyone else, and especially when it means immunizing their corporate cronies from liability for harming the public.  But to make it on the list twice in one year?  Why, that takes an extra special amount of awesomeness! 

Luckily for us, we are able to bestow such an honor today, thanks to Politico’s story about civil justice-basher and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (see our Boehner post from last June)!  Here’s what Politico writes:

For much of his political career, House Speaker John Boehner has railed against judicial over-reach and the harmful effects of excessive litigating.

But while the congressman from Ohio and his Republican Party have a long history of bashing trial lawyers, the speaker himself has shown that he can be quite the litigator.

Not only has Boehner filed legal briefs in the state litigation challenging the federal heath care reform law, he has “hired outside lawyers to back the controversial Defense of Marriage Act.”  Oh, let’s see what else.  Turns out that he’s sued for money, too, as part of a “successful lawsuit in 1997 that stemmed from the ethics investigation of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and he sued Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) in the case — and won $1.2 million in damages.”

Politico notes, “In both the health reform and gay marriage lawsuits, Boehner has essentially tried to make the courts a tool of how he operates as speaker.…But using the courts to protect legal rights and overturn laws runs counter to conservative rhetoric that Boehner — and his GOP allies — have voiced over the years.”  Ya think?

Actually, anti-civil justice rhetoric isn’t the biggest problem.  He’s also gone way out of his way to immunize the pharmaceutical industry from suits by patients who are killed or injured by unsafe drugs.

Sadly (and no crying!), here’s someone who did not make our hypocrite list today: conservative constitutional lawyer Randy E. Barnett, who wrote in Saturday’s Washington Examiner, “[t]ort law is at the heart of what is called the ‘police power of states'" so federal laws that limit tort rights, like Boehner’s pharmaceutical bill (which is buried in the federal medical malpractice bill, H.R. 5), are unconstitutional. 

Unfortunately, Barnett also notes support for state enactment of limits on the rights of sick and injured patients. In other words, with friends like these …

“Tort Reform” Exposed for What It Is – Immunity

Let’s drop the pretense.  Anyone working in state legislative politics these days knows what goes on:  industries with money or clout line up each year to get their own special laws ensuring they are never held responsible for anything they do wrong.  The people who are always hurt by this are everyday Americans who do not even know these law have passed until they are hurt and then learn there’s nothing they can do.

These laws aren’t so-called “tort reforms.”  They’re immunity laws.  Their purpose is not to make the world a better place, but to immunize from liability the medical industry, polluters, drug companies, and whoever else is dumping money on state politicians.  And these special interests are doing everything they can to convince decent, hardworking Americans to go along as their legal rights are simply taken away.  Eliminated.  Gone and never to return.

Take what’s happening in North Carolina, which is now considering atrocious legislation that would provide immunity not only to negligent emergency room personnel, but to the entire pharmaceutical industry.  Forget that more preventable errors occur in an ER than in any other place in a hospital, or that in states like Texas where a similar immunity law was passed, ER’s have now become even more dangerous.  Meanwhile, no patient has any recourse if they or their child is permanently disabled, disfigured, brain-damaged or killed.  This bill would essentially make “negligence in the ER legal” in North Carolina, too.

As for drug industry immunity, it seems NC is thinking about adopting the horrendous law that Michigan passed in the 1990s to make it impossible for anyone hurt or killed by a defective or dangerous FDA-approved drug to file suit there – something that even our very pro-business U.S. Supreme Court said was a terrible idea.

Then there’s Florida, which has a new way of looking at the immunity issue – making sure it doesn’t apply when rich people are hurt or killed.  Just poor people.  Here’s how the Palm Beach Post put it:  

Florida would have a two-tiered legal system - one for the rich and one for the poor - under a GOP-backed legislative proposal designed to help doctors avoid malpractice lawsuits, opponents say.

If a Medicaid recipient is the victim of a medical mistake, the most he or his family could recover would be $200,000 under a provision of a Medicaid overhaul bill moving through the legislature.

The proposed cap, believed to be one of the most severe in the nation, could be lifted if it is proved a doctor acted maliciously.

However, lawyers say it's unlikely such a finding would ever be made. With a maximum $200,000 recovery, few lawyers would take a case involving one of the state's 2.9 million elderly and low-income Medicaid recipients.

"It would shut the door to the courthouse for everyone on Medicaid," said Spencer Kuvin, president of the Palm Beach County Justice Association.

We blogged about this idea a few months ago. 

No offense, Oklahoma, but the Draconian “cap” on compensation that you just passed?  That’s just so last decade.

When All Else Fails… Taxes!

As we’ve noted before, Michigan is the only state in the nation that completely immunizes the drug industry for producing dangerous, unsafe FDA-approved drugs.  Even the pro-business U.S. Supreme Court believes a law like this is a bad thing for the country, as they ruled in the 2009 case in Wyeth v. Levine. 

Apparently most lawmakers don’t care that the law has been devastating for Michiganders.   And they don’t care that it failed to accomplish any promised economic benefits for the state – like jobs.  (Thousands of good paying jobs in the pharmaceutical industry left the state after the law was passed.) 

OK so if basic fairness isn’t working, and the jobs argument isn’t working, what’s it gonna take for Michigan to repeal this law?

Taxes, that’s what!

On Friday, a state appeals court threw out a case that had been brought by the state Attorney General, who was “trying to recover millions of tax dollars spent on behalf of Medicaid recipients who used Vioxx.”  The Court said that even this kind of case was a "no no" under Michigan’s drug immunity law:

The state said the lawsuit is about false Medicaid claims, not product liability, but judges Henry William Saad and David Sawyer disagreed.

"A court is not bound by a party's choice of labels. . . . Plaintiffs claim that Merck made deceptive statements about the safety and efficacy of Vioxx, and that they would not have paid all or part of the cost of Vioxx prescribed to Michigan Medicaid beneficiaries had Merck not made the allegedly false and deceptive statements," Saad wrote.

As the article notes, “Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market in 2004 after its own research showed the once-blockbuster drug doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke. The company paid $4.85 billion to settle most of the roughly 50,000 lawsuits alleging Vioxx harmed or killed users.”

So here are poor Michigan taxpayers stuck with the bill for all the Medicaid claims.  Must be hard for them to read about how in 2008, 30 states were able to split a $58 million deceptive marketing settlement with Merck over Vioxx. 

Are you mad yet, Michiganders?

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid - Drug Companies Are Losing Their Patents!

Victims of unsafe drugs had better watch out because the Lipitor patent is out to expire.

I know that might seem strange to say, but take our word for it.  The drug industry never stops finding new ways to blame judges, juries, lawyers and victims of its own lethal screw ups for its financial “woes”, even though lawsuits have nothing to do with the bottom line of this profiteering industry (and don’t just take our word on that).  But it’s how we got exquisitely bad laws like the federal “vaccine court” and complete drug industry immunity in Michigan.  

The complaining should be starting any minute.

According to today’s front page New York Times, "This year alone, because of patent expirations, the drug industry will lose control over more than 10 megamedicines whose combined annual sales have neared $50 billion."  (Guess the human gene patent business isn’t quite doin’ it.)

The Times also reports that there are “other changes afoot” that will cut down on their “immense profits.”

“Growing restrictions on gifts, fees and trips to influence doctors to use their products” (thank goodness – see here here);

“Curbs on the ghost writing of medical journal articles” (thank goodness- see here);

"A push for more disclosure of negative study results" (thank you Vioxx for that one).

Let’s hope that all happens, although there is more than enough reason to be skeptical.

But there’s more:

The industry has also been unsettled by the scores of fraud, bribery and kickback cases involving conduct that federal investigators contend have added billions to the nation’s drug bill. The penalties have been stiff, and the settlements steep.

In 2009, Pfizer paid the largest criminal fine in the nation’s history as part of a $2.3 billion settlement over marketing drugs for unapproved uses.  Some analysts say larger fraud and foreign bribery cases will come. The drug companies are responding with extra-careful sales training and vows to restrain marketing zeal.  But the change in corporate culture could cost them: internal documents show some of the companies have profited spectacularly from seeking federal approval of a new drug for a limited use, then marketing it far more widely off label.

Yes, and not to mention all the people killed or injured by dangerous off label use.  (Nothing unique to Pfizer, of course - here, here.)

Does anyone disagree that a change in corporate culture is exactly what is needed? 

Wisconsin’s New Fantasy Governor

This week, Wisconsin’s new Governor Scott Walker laid out the details of his first bills to get the economy moving in Wisconsin and bring jobs back to the state.  Number one on the list? Take away the legal rights of injured people!   Wow, that should really get the economic recovery going! 

In fact, in keeping with the spirit of Wisconsin’s new state government (which flipped from Democratic to Republican this last election), I have a song recommendation.  It’s Radiohead's “In Limbo” (listen here), which has one very predominant lyric: “You're living in a fantasy.” As in:

I'm lost at sea
Don't bother me
I've lost my way
I've lost my way
You're living in a fantasy

Here’s what I mean.  His idea is to bring jobs to Wisconsin by making sure that if your mom or grandma is abused or neglected in a nursing home, your ability to be compensated is severely limited and the nursing home is less accountable. 

Other proposals weaken the accountability of the worst of the worst corporate wrongdoers in Wisconsin– the ones who should be liable for punitive damages, but no longer will be thanks to the Governor’s plan.

For those of us living in the real world, here’s an important thing to remember.  If corporate wrongdoers can’t be sued, they’ll become more dangerous.  That’s what happens.  Laws like this won’t bring back jobs or even keep them.  Just look at Michigan. Several years ago Michigan decided to completely immunize drug companies that produce unsafe drugs.  The business lobbies argued they needed the law to encourage drug companies to stay in Michigan.  No other state has such a law.  No sooner did the law pass than pharmaceutical jobs started leaving Michigan by the hundreds.

In 2005, the Economic Policy Institute (“EPI”) released a study debunking common myths about the costs of the legal system and its burden on consumers. According to EPI,

There is no historical correlation between the inflated estimates of the costs of the tort system and corporate profits, product quality, productivity, or research and development (R&D) spending. Evidence suggests that the tort system, without the proposed restrictions, has actually been beneficial to the economy in all these areas. … [Moreover], significant tort law change would be more likely to slow employment growth than to promote it. Endlessly repeating that so-called ‘tort reform’ will create jobs does not make it true.

Except, of course, if you’re living in a fantasy.

60 Minutes And GlaxoSmithKline's Whistleblower

We were tickled pink last night to see 60 Minutes start the year off with the sensational story of Cheryl Eckard, the GlaxoSmithKline whistleblower whose courage and persistence led to one of the largest “qui tam” cases ever against a corporation for defrauding the government (See our earlier coverage here.)  

Cheryl’s job, as manager of Glaxo’s global quality assurance, “was to inspect plants to make sure that the drugs had the right ingredients, the right potency and met government standards for purity.” In fact, she was sent in because an FDA inspection had already seen problems as this plant (noting that “FDA inspections of drug plants are only occasional, so it's up to drug companies to police themselves" – which is why litigation is such a critical backup.)  But as 60 Minutes put it, Eckard “found much more than the FDA had.”  For example,

[T]he employees were contaminating products, including the anti-bacterial ointment Bactroban, which was made in a sealed tank to prevent contamination.

"They were opening up the lid and then they were sticking their body into the tank and scraping it with like a paddle," Eckard said.

"But this product is supposed to be free of bacteria. Why would they do that?" Pelley asked.

"It saved money," Eckard replied.

As her team continued its evaluation of the plant, Eckard says she discovered something much worse than contamination: because of failures on various production lines, she says that powerful medications were getting mixed up.

"Are you saying that different kinds of drugs were packed into the same bottle?" Pelley asked.

"Yes. And that's shocking," she replied.

Cheryl warned and pleaded and warned and pleaded with her bosses to shut this plant down.  Then she was fired.  And then, she found some great lawyers:

This case goes right to the heart of patient safety," attorney Neil Getnick told Pelley.

Getnick and Lesley Ann Skillen are Eckard's lawyers. And under the federal whistleblower law, they filed suit on behalf of the federal government claiming that Glaxo had defrauded the taxpayers.

Asked how this is fraud against the U.S. government, Getnick said, "Pharmaceutical drugs are paid for by our Medicare program for the elderly, by our Medicaid program for the impoverished. And here we have a situation where hundreds of millions of dollars were paid for adulterated drugs through our Medicaid programs."

Glaxo pleaded guilty to a felony. It admitted it distributed "adulterated drugs Paxil CR, Avandamet (a diabetes drug), Kytril (a drug given to cancer patients), and Bactroban." All together, the company paid $750 million to settle the criminal conviction and Eckard's suit. 

Check out the sleazy response by Ian McCubbin, senior vice president at Glaxo in London: “I don't know Cheryl Eckard. And I don't all the details of her accusations.”  Could it happen again?  “I absolutely hope not,” he replied. 

Gee, with that kind of confidence thank goodness the civil justice system still remains the last line of defense.