Mark nodded. He knew Aidan and I were separated and he knew about the tension between Cleo and me, though I hadn’t shared how bad things had gotten lately. He was also generally incredibly respectful of family matters. One mention of a sick child or ailing parent or school play that needed attending and Mark was the first to insist that take priority. But tonight the mention of Cleo hadn’t elicited even a flicker of recognition. Whatever was going on must be serious.
“This new matter is a little different than what you typically work on.” He fell quiet, like he was waiting for permission to continue.
“Maybe you can tell me a little more?”
“Right, of course,” he said. “A client has a high-profile employee who the employer suspects was involved in some illegal activity. Illegal activity that may have impacted his performance at work, which has potentially exposed the employer to liability.”
“That sounds exactly likeeverysituation I handle.”
Mark smiled. “Fair point,” he said. “Except the employee, in this case, is recently deceased. A death that his employer suspects may be tied to the personal issues he was having. Drove his car into a telephone pole. Seems this employee may have been distracted enough beforehand that he made errors while at work. Errors that may now be linked to product defects, which injured consumers.”
I cleared my throat. Willed myself not to overreact. This was a coincidence, obviously.
But my hands were trembling as I retrieved a pad and a pen from my work bag to take notes. “Who is the employer?”
“Darden Pharmaceuticals.”
I kept my eyes on the pad.
“And who is the employee?” I asked, hoping the tremor in my voice wasn’t as obvious as it felt.
“Doug Sinclair, VP of Risk Management.” Mark sighed, adjusting his glasses. “Darden doesn’t know what his personal issues were. And they need to in order to respond to this situation wholeheartedly. That’s where you come in.”
I should tell Mark about Doug and me, immediately. It would be the ethically responsible thing to do. But then again, what difference could it possibly make now?
“I’m sorry, what is it that Darden wants from us, exactly, with respect to these personal stressors?” I asked, pressing on.
“Tragedy notwithstanding, Darden would simply like the truth on the record. This employee was entrusted with ensuring the safety of a drug that seems to have had … issues. Apparently, he was contacted by a doctor—one of a group of OB-GYNs who’d gotten acquainted at a conference. That doctor had noticed a possible connection between cases involving Xytek and bad outcomes in pregnant patients. But Doug Sinclair never made the required adverse event report to the FDA. If he had, given the severity of the allegation, the drug would have been pulled immediately while an investigation was conducted, or at least an appropriate warning issued. If Doug’s personal problems were serious enough that he committed suicide …” Mark shook his head ruefully. “Perhaps those same issues could have caused him to mishandle reporting the call.”
“What about the people actually involved in the drug’s manufacture or the approval process? Aren’t they the ones who are really at fault?”
“Doug wasn’t a chemist, of course. In fact, he joined Darden after the drug was already on the market. But the reality is, complications often surface later with prescription drugs, often in an unforeseen subset of patients. As soon as a company becomes aware, though, it must be reported to the FDA. From there the drug either gets pulled or it gets a black box warning like Xytek now has. That’s the best a company can do—respond to known risks. But Doug Sinclair was the only one who knew about these physicians’ warnings, because he got the call. And these weren’t small problems. There have been infantfatalities.” Mark caught himself. “Allegedly. That’s according to the accusations in the lawsuit. Now that the MDL has been consolidated, we’re goingto take over the defense, a big upgrade from that small slice of Darden’s M and A business we only recently took over. If this litigation goes well, we could be in line to take over as the company’s lead outside counsel on all matters. Fiscally speaking, that would be very helpful. As you know, it’s been a challenging couple of years for the firm.”
Blair, Stevenson had lost two big clients when they’d been bankrupted by the recession. And then J.P. Morgan had taken a huge swath of their business elsewhere because of a petty conflict between their general counsel and our head of M&A. There had even been talk of a merger, or of us being purchased outright—options none of the partners wanted.
“Personal problems—is that really all they know? That seems awfully … vague.”
“According to Darden’s internal investigation, it seems that Sinclair was being blackmailed for his involvement in some college admissions scandal,” Mark said. “Word is that he was already estranged from his daughter; his wife is deceased. He was apparently quite depressed in the weeks leading up to the accident. It appears that this threat of blackmail was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Darden needs these facts confirmed, that’s all.”
This was absurd. Even if Doug had, in fact, availed himself of Advantage Consulting’s “extra” services. Even if he had lied to me andhadbribed Amherst, making the blackmail a bigger threat than he’d let on—Doug wasnotdepressed.
“So, no one at Darden had any idea about the issues with this drug before this physician called Doug.That’sDarden’s position?” It came out a bit more sharply than I’d intended.
“That doesn’t seem plausible to you?”
“Not especially, given what’s got to be a very complex process of checks and double checks. From the little I know, this MDL is massive. Thousands of claimants. Seems unlikely that there were no earlier red flags. And not in any testing, either?”
“I personally don’t know enough about the drug development process to assess that likelihood.” Mark shrugged. Then he looked me in the eye. “And frankly, neither do you.”
Ah, now Mark was being sharp. He was right. I wasn’t that familiar with the details of Doug’s job or the prescription drug manufacturing process, but my gut said this whole thing didn’t hold water.
“Regardless, I don’t think Darden needs to worry,” I said. “I mean, even if these details about Doug’s personal life did surface, the public would be unlikely to make the connection between any of that and Xytek. Why not just leave it alone?”
Tell him you knew Doug.It wasn’t too late.
“Oh, no, no. I’m sorry. I’m not being clear,” Mark went on. “Darden isn’t worried about these factssurfacing. TheywantDoug Sinclair’s personal situation, the truth of it, made public. They want to demonstrate that they would have acted immediately if they had known physicians were detecting a problem.”
In other words, Darden wanted Doug—now dead and unable to defend himself—to be the sacrificial lamb. That said, did I know him well enough after three weeks to say for sure he wasn’t responsible in some way, for something? No.
