Category: News Feeds

Purdue Pharma has agreed to plead guilty to three criminal charges and pay $8.3 billion in a settlement that would end criminal and civil investigations launched by the U.S. Department of Justice into the company’s marketing of opioid prescription drugs.

The settlement announced Wednesday – the largest ever against a pharmaceutical manufacturer – also would transform Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue, which filed for bankruptcy protection last year. The deal calls for converting Purdue into a public benefit company controlled by a trust and required to act in the public interest.

Per the DOJ statement, Purdue Pharma has agreed to plead guilty in federal court in New Jersey to a “three-count felony information charging it with one count of dual-object conspiracy to defraud the United States and to violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and two counts of conspiracy to violate the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute.”

Federal prosecutors hailed the deal as a milestone in their ongoing efforts to hold drug makers accountable for the damage caused by prescription opioids like Purdue’s OxyContin.

“With criminal guilty pleas, a federal settlement of more than $8 billion, and the dissolution of a company and repurposing its assets entirely for the public’s benefit, the resolution in today’s announcement re-affirms that the Department of Justice will not relent in its multi-pronged efforts to combat the opioids crisis,” said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said in the statement.

The deal does not call for prison time for any executives or members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue. However, it does not preclude criminal charges in the future.

It also does not resolve state claims against Purdue or the Sackler family. Indeed, the two parties face a slew of state, local and Native American tribal lawsuits, including one led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said in a statement that she would continue to fight in court.

“We are committed to holding the Sacklers and others responsible for the role they played in fueling the opioid crisis,” James said.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2018 data shows that every day, 128 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids. 

The avalanche of litigation is what prompted Purdue to file for bankruptcy protection. As a result, the deal with the federal government requires court approval. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 17 before U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Under the federal settlement, the monetary damages are split into a criminal fine of $3.544 billion, a criminal forfeiture of $2 billion and a civil penalty of $2.8 billion. The Sacklers have agreed to pay $225 million to settle its civil liability under the False Claims Act.

A big chunk of the criminal forfeiture – $1.775 billion – is tied to Purdue’s conversion to a public-benefit company or PBC. The figure represents the value that would flow to state and local governments as a result of the reformed company’s funding of opioid abatement programs and donations of anti-overdose drugs, among other initiatives. Purdue would pay the remaining $225 million directly.

As part of its guilty pleas, Purdue admits to a number of charges. They include misleading federal regulators about its efforts to prevent opioids from falling into the wrong hands and promoting opioids to doctors that the company knew were prescribing the drugs for uses that were “unsafe, ineffective, name medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion.”

“Purdue deeply regrets and accepts responsibility for the misconduct detailed by the Department of Justice in the agreed statement of facts,” Steve Miller, who joined Purdue’s board as chairman in July 2018, said in a statement. He added: “Purdue today is a very different company. We have made significant changes to our leadership, operations, governance, and oversight.”

The changes include a new president and CEO and the resignation of Sackler family members from the company’s board. Purdue also ended all promotions of opioids and opioid products.

Photo: Moussa81, Getty Images

* A South Florida lawyer who used to work at Greenberg Traurig has been arrested for allegedly committing several bank robberies. This would make an amazing plot for a sequel to Point Break. [Miami Herald]

* A Sacramento judge refused to force the California GOP to release information about its controversial ballot dropbox program. [Los Angeles Times]

* A court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by one of Michael Jackson’s accusers, holding that the late singer’s companies did not owe the plaintiff a duty of care. [Yahoo News]

* The home of a lawyer representing a group seeking to remove homeless people from New York City hotel rooms has been vandalized. [New York Post]

* A defamation case against President Trump has been sidelined because a lawyer set to argue a matter traveled from out of state and was denied entrance to the courthouse. [USA Today]

* A New Jersey lawyer facing ethics complaints blamed his wife for his failure to appear at an important asylum hearing. This attorney is playing with fire… [New Jersey Law Journal]

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to Vault’s 2021 practice area rankings, which Biglaw firm is at the top of the securities litigation list?

Hint: Cravath and Sullivan & Cromwell come in 2nd and 3rd, respectively, so you know a truly elite firm is #1.

See the answer on the next page.

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article about how paralegals deserve more respect within the legal industry. The piece received a lot of positive feedback from paralegals across the country, and I also received some emails from legal secretaries about their own roles within the legal profession. Of course, legal secretaries have been impacted by technological changes within the legal industry, and this website has recounted numerous times how legal secretaries and other administrative staff are laid off in high numbers whenever a law firm faces financial issues. However, legal secretaries deserve more respect within the legal profession because they are often a vital part of any law firm.

The main reason why legal secretaries are so important to law firms is because they can help attorneys generate more revenue. Indeed, from my own experiences, reducing the number of legal secretaries at a firm can sometimes be “penny wise and dollar foolish.” As many attorneys understand from firsthand experience, legal secretaries can often free up time so that lawyers can bill additional hours on legal work. If a legal secretary can empower a lawyer to bill an extra hour of work, this may pay for more than a day of a secretary’s salary, and legal secretaries can ensure that a firm is as efficient and productive as possible.

In my own career, firms at which I worked that had more secretarial support were often far more efficient and productive than firms that had fewer legal secretaries. For instance, I once worked at a firm that had a small number of legal secretaries who rarely performed work for associates. At that firm, the other associates and I spent much of our time on the road taking depositions and appearing in court in our area and across the country. Several times a month, I had to submit all my travel receipts for reimbursement, and since I was often appearing for multiple clients (and our firm system for some reason could not automatically split expenses between multiple clients) I had to do extensive calculations and make many entries to submit expense reimbursement requests.

I spent hours each month submitting expense reimbursement requests, and all the other associates at the firm also spent a substantial amount of time on this chore. My morale, and I suspect the morale of other people at our firm, took a hit whenever we had a large amount of expense reimbursement requests to process, since it was a painful and laborious chore to submit those requests. Our firm could have freed up our time to spend on billable matters and improved our morale by hiring additional administrative professionals who could more efficiently handle this task. Indeed, I worked at firms at which legal secretaries handled expense reimbursements, and this freed up time for my colleagues and me to be more productive at our legal tasks.

There are so many other situations beyond expense reimbursements in which I could have benefited from a legal secretary even though my firm at the time did not provide much secretarial support to associates. One time, I was tasked with scanning and uploading deposition transcripts into a firm document management system for five days straight because that firm did not provide secretarial support to associates, and I was told to get this project done. The firm likely lost thousands of dollars of billing as a result of this inefficiency, and a legal secretary could have helped me with this purely administrative project. While working as an associate at a firm without many secretaries, every time I drafted a letter, printed it out on stationery, scanned it, and emailed and mailed it to an adversary, a secretary could have helped me so I would be able to move onto other billable tasks. The amount of revenue a firm could generate with secretaries is often more than without secretaries, and additional firms need to consider this dynamic more when they evaluate their administrative needs.

Furthermore, secretaries can add to the culture and institutional knowledge of a firm in important ways. I recently received an email from the first legal secretary who helped me out when I was a “baby lawyer” at a “street law” firm years ago. This legal secretary taught me more about the actual practice of law than my law professors, since she knew how to file documents, where court appearances took place, and other particularities of practicing law in our jurisdiction. In addition, the legal secretary knew exactly which exhibits I should bring to depositions, when I had to actually appear in court for appearances, and taught me our firm’s administrative procedures. Moreover, that legal secretary had been at the firm for decades, and she had endless stories of the partners as young lawyers and kept tabs on where alums of the firm had gone with their careers. This secretary was an institution, and the firm was much better off with her presence.

Furthermore, in my experience (and granted, this could vary at different shops), legal secretaries and other administrative staff are far more likely to handle the small things that boost morale at a firm. For instance, legal secretaries and administrative staff often handled the lottery pools at many firms where I worked, and this was often a huge deal at those shops. Moreover, legal secretaries were often far more likely to celebrate birthdays, bar passage, and other occasions that made it more fun to be at work.

All told, it is disheartening to see that the roles of legal secretaries are vanishing at many law firms across the country. Of course, law firm managers understand best how to adjust their overhead to increase their bottom line, and some smaller firms may not need secretarial support. However, law firm leaders should evaluate how much more productive and efficient attorneys can be with legal secretaries, since administrative staff can help attorneys bill more hours and generate additional revenue. In addition, legal secretaries are often institutions at their firms, and many shops benefit from the knowledge and experience of legal secretaries.

Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

By now, we’re all familiar with the “new normal” of navigating through a pandemic. For lawyers counseling businesses, these COVID-challenged times have required a quick refresher on the finer points of concepts including contracts, liability, and risk – and a scramble for answers to brand-new questions.

In a new treatise from PLI Press, COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: Business and Legal Challenges, public health and safety regulation experts James T. O’Reilly and Philip Hagan offer background and analysis that lawyers can use. The first publication to address these complex, evolving issues, the treatise combines practical advice with the latest scientific research and guidance from key government agencies.

Here are some key points for businesses – and their counsel – to consider as they begin to assess the impact of COVID-19 and to prepare for its long-term consequences:

Contracts are key. If you haven’t brushed up on force majeure since law school, now is a good time to revisit this and other contract concepts. A chapter on “COVID-19, Contracts and Frustration Defenses” provides an overview of contract law for businesses who may have seen their operations interrupted by the pandemic when they, their vendors, or third parties were unable to fulfill contracts. In addition to force majeure clauses, O’Reilly and Hagan explore issues of foreseeability, and defenses to non-performance like impossibility, impracticability, and frustration of purpose.

Employers should continuously evaluate risks and liabilities in their workspaces. OSHA has provided recommendations for how businesses can evaluate the risk of COVID-19 spreading in their workplaces and design systems for preventing transmission. These include both engineering controls, such as workspace redesign and upgrades to office air filtration systems, and administrative controls, which reduce person-to-person contact through “staggered work shifts, downsizing operations, delivering services remotely, and other exposure-reducing measures.” In the treatise, O’Reilly and Hagan adapt these and other recommendations into actionable guidelines.

The book includes an overview of workplace liability claims, looking at potential employer liability for employees who contract the virus on the job. The authors discuss potential theories of liability that employers should be aware of and the evidentiary difficulties that the parties will encounter. In that context, they also dive into the complexities of contact tracing as it relates to employer liability and evidence of infection. In addition, they discuss liability risks arising not just from employees catching the virus, but from customers and other members of the public catching the virus. The authors provide an overview of certain tort concepts, an explanation of workers’ compensation programs, and once again draw on OSHA guidance, or lack thereof, and explain the interaction of these concepts with respect to employer liability.

Focus on active response. Regardless of their type of business, all employers should maintain active response plans that minimize potential COVID-19 exposures to their employees and customers, the authors say. The CDC and other government entities provide guidance that can be incorporated into business operating scenarios.

Plan for “black swans.” In other words: expect the unexpected. Now that a rare event with extreme global consequences has in fact occurred, businesses will endeavor to structure contracts and business plans with risk scenarios in mind. When counseling businesses on planning and liability, think about these “black swan” events and develop strategies accordingly.

To download a complimentary chapter of COVID-19 and Other Pandemics: Business and Legal Challenges from PLI, click here.

Visit PLI’s Coronavirus Developments page to access related webcasts and on-demand programs.

About PLI

Practising Law Institute is a nonprofit learning organization dedicated to keeping attorneys and other professionals at the forefront of knowledge and expertise. PLI is chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York and was founded in 1933 by Harold P. Seligson. The organization provides the highest quality, accredited, continuing legal and professional education programs in a variety of formats which are delivered by more than 4,000 volunteer faculty including prominent lawyers, judges, investment bankers, accountants, corporate counsel, and U.S. and international government regulators. PLI publishes a comprehensive library of Treatises, Course Handbooks, Answer Books and Journals also available through the PLI PLUS online platform. The essence of PLI’s mission is its commitment to the pro bono community. View PLI’s upcoming live webcasts here.

— Attorney and former television host Adrienne Lawrence, in comments about Jeffrey Toobin’s Zoom masturbation incident. Toobin’s indiscretion occurred earlier this week during a Zoom call between his colleagues at the New Yorker and WNYC. He has been fired from the New Yorker and is taking leave from CNN.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

“They’ve set up an Iron Curtain so you can’t get out the New York Post story which I happened to know is 100 percent accurate,” America’s Mayor told a North Dakota radio host on Tuesday. “But even if it isn’t accurate, the American people are entitled to know it.”

Is there a First Amendment right to slander the children of your political opponent, or … ?

Never mind.

Rudy Giuliani’s fantastic claims about Hunter Biden abandoning a laptop containing evidence of extensive corruption in a repair shop 3,000 miles away from his home in California have landed with a thud. Apparently, no one believes that Hunter Biden used his laptop to text “his siblings” (wait, he only has one surviving sibling!) bitching about having to “collect money for his father, take care of the family expenses, and kick back half of it to Joe Biden. For 30 years.” Hunter Biden is 50, so apparently he’s had to pay a vig to the old man since college. Harsh!

Even though Giuliani admitted that he chose the New York Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out,” multiple reporters at the outlet refused to put their names on an unvetted story with such obvious credibility problems. The Post found its Twitter account throttled, with most social media platforms limiting the spread of the story, and despite Fox hyping the story all hours of the day — a story the network itself passed on as beneath its own journalistic standards — it’s having no effect on the race.

So Giuliani and the Mensa Squad have kicked it up another notch. What if … KIDDIE PORN? Hey, it’s working for the Q-anon loons. Why not, right?

Hence Giuliani’s seamless pivot to the “Hunter Biden: Sex Pervert” storyline.

And if you can’t trust One America News Network, who can ya trust?

The problem, as we pointed out on Monday, is that possession of child pornography is a crime. So if Rudy and the gang have been making copies and passing this stuff around for weeks without notifying law enforcement, they might be in deep shit themselves.

Which may or may not have been the impetus for Giuliani’s field trip, accompanied by the ever-upstanding Bernie Kerik (he was pardoned!), to visit the New Castle County Police Department and turn over whatever he’s got.

That’s Giuliani sharing with a Newsmax anchor what is either a hacked or fake text of Hunter Biden explaining that his sister-in-law was worried about the impact of his drug use on his children. It is clearly an excruciatingly painful family conflict, but in no way suggests the existence of child pornography. Nonetheless, Giuliani intones ominously that “this is supported by numerous pictures of underage girls.”

If the subpoena published by the New York Post is genuine, then the FBI has had these documents since late 2019, and no arrests have occurred. But if anyone’s taking advantage of a child, it’s Giuliani and the Post, which used a family photo of Hunter Biden and his minor children, their faces completely unpixelated, to “authenticate” its story.

Local law enforcement seems to have been underwhelmed by Giuliani and Kerik’s shocking, belated disclosures, swiftly lobbing Rudy’s printouts back into the FBI’s court.

“In light of ongoing questions about the credibility of these claims and multiple reports that the FBI is investigating their veracity, law enforcement is referring this matter to the FBI,” the Delaware Department of Justice said in a statement to The Daily Beast.

But speaking of ill-advised images, The Guardian got a look at the new Borat movie, and …. UHHHH.

In the film, released on Friday, the former New York mayor and current personal attorney to Donald Trump is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist.

Following an obsequious interview for a fake conservative news programme, the pair retreat at her suggestion for a drink to the bedroom of a hotel suite, which is rigged with concealed cameras.

After she removes his microphone, Giuliani, 76, can be seen lying back on the bed, fiddling with his untucked shirt and reaching into his trousers. They are then interrupted by Borat who runs in and says: “She’s 15. She’s too old for you.”

Criminy.

Rudy Giuliani faces questions after compromising scene in new Borat film [Guardian]
Rudy Giuliani says he sent alleged sexually explicit materials involving underage girls from Hunter Biden to Delaware police [WashEx]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.