Former Exec Ordered to Write Book for Crimes

Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

When a former pharmaceutical executive pleaded guilty to white-collar crime in 2009, the judge didn't throw the book at him—he ordered him to write one. He was asked to reflect upon the criminal behavior in this case so that others similarly situated may be guided in avoiding such behavior. And make it 75,000 words.

The finished book, written during his two-year probation, has been submitted into the court record. His lawyer—who says he had never heard of such a punishment for a crime—says the former Bristol-Myers Squibb executive has now completed his sentence, in a case in which he was accused of providing false information to regulators. The charge stemmed from negotiations with a generic drug company seeking to copy Bristol's blockbuster blood thinner, Plavix.

The former executive didn't serve any jail time. He was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and serve two years of unsupervised probation, with a "special condition" that he write the book, according to a Indianapolis Pharmaceutical Lawyer familiar with the case.

Upon reflection, the former Harvard English major isn't so sure his experience could serve as a cautionary tale for others.

Setting out to tell his tale, he contemplated the literary works of several greats. In a prologue he writes that he considered "Call me a Schlemiel." Or, "It was the worst of times," as opening lines.

In the book, he describes reading Dickens' "David Copperfield" as a child. At Harvard, he wrote his honors thesis on "The End of Life in Dickens." Other literary influences, says his lawyer, include Dostoevski, Joseph Conrad and John Updike.

The sweeping 253-page manuscript details his life from his escape from his native Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956, to his dust up with law enforcement over Plavix's patent.

The Justice Department had a mistaken belief that he had made a statement to the government that he knew to be false. He wrote that the Justice Department was not averse to destroying an innocent life.

The book includes colorful characters like "a tough U.S. Attorney" who questioned him in connection with the Plavix case. The exchange took place just a few years before the lawyer would rise to national political stardom as the governor of New Jersey. The author describes undergoing "animated and intensive questioning" from the attorney.

The book is told in a series of third-person flashbacks to his immigrant success story—as an eight-year-old he hid in a hay cart and dashed across a bridge to escape Hungary to Austria—juxtaposed with a first-person, behind-the-scenes account of the Plavix case.

The manuscript was electronically entered into the court docket in October, making it available through the federal court system's Public Access to Court Electronic Records.

It isn't uncommon for judges to mete out unconventional sentences.

In April, an Alabama circuit court judge ordered a man accused of receiving stolen property to serve three days in jail for contempt of court for wearing sagging pants during a hearing. In 2008, a housing-court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, ordered a landlord accused of building-code violations to serve six months of house arrest in one of his dilapidated rental properties.

Since the 1990s, a municipal judge in Fort Lupton, Colo., has sounded off on teenagers accused of blasting too-loud music. His prescription calls for them to listen to the ballads of crooners like Barry Manilow.

Still, compelled authorship strikes some legal experts as highly unusual.

Plavix, used to ward off heart attacks and strokes in people with cardiovascular disease, is one of the best-selling drugs in history. The drug's $6.8 billion in U.S. sales last year, as tallied by IMS Health, ranked second behind Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor cholesterol pill. But Plavix will lose U.S. patent protection on May 17, which will trigger competition from generic drug makers.

Another drug maker, Apotex, wanted to sell a generic copy of Plavix years before the patent was to expire. Pittsburgh Patent Lawyers state that the author, then a senior vice president at Bristol-Myers, helped negotiate a proposed agreement of patent litigation in 2006.

But the deal required antitrust clearance from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state regulators, according to Chicago Antitrust and Trade Regulation Lawyers.

The author signed a certification verifying with the FTC certain aspects of the proposed settlement. Later the Justice Department alleged He had made oral representations to an Apotex executive that weren't spelled out in the written agreement—contradicting the signed certification.

In the book, he writes that he learned during a business trip in July 2006 that FBI agents were raiding his office at Bristol-Myers's Park Avenue headquarters. Minneapolis Whistleblower Lawyer advocates familiar with the circumstances were unable to comment.

The proposed Plavix patent settlement fell apart. He left Bristol-Myers in 2007, shortly before the company pleaded guilty to providing false statements to the government and paid a $1 million fine.

In 2009, the author pleaded guilty to providing a false certificate to the government. He reiterates in his book that he believed the certification to be true at the time he signed it.

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