Drug firm workers acquitted in trial on kickbacks

BOSTON -- Eight current and former pharmaceutical company employees were acquitted Wednesday of charges they offered kickbacks to doctors in the form of consulting fees, dinners, golf trips and other gifts to get them to prescribe certain drugs.

The case against employees at TAP Pharmaceutical Products, the maker of the heavily marketed heartburn drug Prevacid, had been closely watched by the drug industry and the medical profession, which have been criticized in recent years for giving and receiving freebies. Critics say the practice drives up the already high costs of prescription drugs and erodes public confidence that doctors are prescribing the right medicines.

The federal jury deliberated for parts of four days following a three-month trial.

"The line between marketing and what they call a kickback is not clear," defense attorney Steve Delinsky said after the verdict. "These people did not have any intention to violate the law."

Several defendants cheered as the verdicts were read, prompting a reprimand from the judge. Their family members kissed, hugged and cried.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office did not return calls for comment.

Prosecutors argued that the TAP employees lavished golf and ski trips, free dinners and other incentives on doctors, along with free drug samples, in exchange for the physicians' agreement to prescribe Prevacid and TAP's prostate cancer drug Lupron.

The government also charged that current and former executives and sales managers at Lake Forest, Ill.-based TAP conspired to defraud Medicare and Medicaid by urging doctors to bill the government for the free drug samples.

The defense contended that it is standard practice and not illegal to offer freebies and that the doctors were not obligated in return to prescribe TAP's drugs. The defense also said the employees never encouraged doctors to bill Medicare and Medicaid for the free samples.

The jury acquitted the TAP employees on those charges as well.

TAP itself was not on trial. The government settled with the company in 2001 for $875 million. TAP spokeswoman Catherine Stueland said the company has since strengthened its ethics and training programs for employees.

The government's star witness was Doug Durand, TAP's former vice president of sales, who filed a whistleblower lawsuit in 1996 alleging that some members of the company's sales force were offering kickbacks to doctors.

Under the federal whistleblower law, Durand received $42 million as part of the government's settlement with TAP, a 50-50 venture between Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Ill., and Takeda Chemical Industries of Japan.