BLOGSCAN - US Supreme Court Turns Down Pfizer Appeal of RICO Conviction

Pfizer Inc, which boasts of being the world's largest research based pharmaceutical company, also seems to be one of the world's largest examples of health care corporations that have withstood an amazing number of settlements, fines, and at times convictions for misbehavior without major apologies, significant changes in leadership or corporate culture, or bankruptcy.  (Look here for a list of the cases, and here for all we have written about Pfizer).  Pfizer, amazingly, has the malodorous distinction of having been convicted by a US jury as a RICO - a racketeering influenced corrupt organization in 2010 (look here).  Pfizer executives, of course, kept their office of counsel busy by appealing the conviction, all the way up to the US Supreme Court.As discussed on the 1BoringOldMan blog, the court has now turned down the appeal and let the conviction, which had been affirmed by lower federal court, stand.   So Pfizer is now officially a racketeering influenced corrupt organization.  Yet although the description of the RICO statute that 1BoringOldMan quoted notes the law can be used to go after the leaders of organized crime, no individual at Pfizer who authorized, directed, or implemented the relevant misbehavior, which was in this case the promotion of Neurontin for off-label uses, for which its benefits were at best unproven, at worse nonexistent, even if its harms are well-documented.  Thus even this RICO conviction has not affected ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: crime deception impunity Neurontin Pfizer RICO Source Type: blogs