Boehringer Is Fined Nearly $1M For Disappearing Documents

How much does it cost if potentially damaging documents disappear? How about $931,000? This is what Boehringer Ingelheim must pay in fines after a US federal court judge expressed dismay and outrage that the drugmaker failed to preserve “countless” files sought by patients who filed lawsuits claiming the Pradaxa bloodthinner caused excessive and, sometimes, fatal bleeding. In a ruling this week, US District Judge David Herndon, who is overseeing more than 1,700 lawsuits, found that Boehringer executives acted “in bad faith” by failing to ensure that documents and files about Pradaxa development and marketing were preserved. “The wrongs here are egregious,” he wrote. And “the gross inadequacy” to preserve the documents, and subsequent delays, justifies the fine. He noted in his 51-page ruling that Boehringer and its attorneys offered innumerable excuses – such as blaming third-party vendors or the in-house IT department; employees for failing to keep text messages; unusual tech issues, such as hard drives that were inadvertently erased, or attorneys for patients who made too many requests for documents. And this apparently went on for months. As an example, Boehringer executives “failed to ensure the auto-delete feature of their employee cell phones, company-owned and personal, was disengaged for the purpose of preserving text messages,” he wrote. This “allowed countless records to be destroyed… There is no question the defendants owed a duty to prese...
Source: Pharmalot - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs