Shareholder lawsuit: delightful weapon against drug companies
By Jon Rappoport
The company is NewLink. The vaccine, or drug, depending on
how it is defined, is called algenpantucel-L. A clinical trial of the
drug recently failed to produce benefits in cancer patients, and the
stock price of the company took a major dive.
A shareholder in NewLink, Rickey Ely, decided to sue.
His reasons are interesting, to say the least.
Clinical trials of new drugs seeking FDA approval go through
four phases. The lawsuit states that phase 2 produced no encouraging
results, violated standard protocol (there was no control group), and
yet the company hyped the outcome of phase 2, and launched phase 3 only a
few months after starting phase 2. Phase 3 shouldn't have been
initiated at all.
Owing to the company's PR machine, shareholders were
encouraged, but when phase 3 turned out to be a bust, the company's
stock price collapsed---thus punishing those shareholders.
Not only that, the lawsuit charges, but during the PR hype
about the drug's promising outlook, some execs of the company actually
sold their own personal shares---1,154,161 shares worth $39.9
million---turning a very nice profit for themselves, before the stock
price crashed.
A shareholder-lawsuit like this can be quite a strategy
against drug companies (or any publicly held company). The shareholder, a
part-owner of the company, is "working from the inside." He's "trying
to protect the company from the harmful actions of its bosses." Even if
he only owns one share, he can sue.
In this case, Rickey Ely is directly suing several NewLink executives. That always tends to get execs' attention.
They lock their office doors. They call their lawyers. They
spill coffee. They have conversations with their spouses. They put
personal plans on hold. They make lists of people they can blame. They
make sure their secretaries are screening phone calls. They undertake a
deep inventory of their...money.
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