A federal jury found the former president of Warner Chilcott not guilty Friday of conspiring with members of the drug company's sales force to pay kickbacks to doctors in exchange for writing prescriptions.
The trial of former Warner Chilcott President W. Carl Reichel in Boston was one of the first prosecutions of a healthcare executive following a pledge by the U.S. Justice Department to hold more individuals accountable for corporate wrongdoing.
An attempt to reach Reichel's attorneys for comment was not immediately successful.
The government had alleged that Reichel encouraged members of his sales force to take doctors out to so-called medical education dinners that were actually social events, and pay doctors to speak at those events so long as they prescribed the company's products.
Reichel's attorneys argued in court documents that there's no direct evidence that Reichel ever gave his sales people such direction, and that they may have misinterpreted his actual instructions.
As a company, Warner Chilcott agreed in October to plead guilty to healthcare fraud and pay the government $125 million to resolve civil and criminal allegations.
Reichel's trial followed a memo penned by U.S. Deputy Attorney Sally Quillian Yates last September emphasizing the importance of accountability in cases of corporate corruption. In that memo, Yates said that companies must now disclose “all relevant facts relating to the individuals responsible for the misconduct” in order to qualify for “cooperation credit”—less severe penalties in exchange for cooperating with the Justice Department.
Many fraud fighters have long complained that the department's efforts against fraud had limited success because it wasn't holding individuals accountable for corporate wrongdoing often enough.
