How big pharma puts profit over the health of the general public
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/mir ... awbreaker/ "Johnson & Johnson has already settled thousands of cases involving illicit promotion of Risperdal, including Department of Justice civil and criminal complaints, for a total fast approaching $3 billion.
But on the morning of the analysts’ meeting, the company was still manning the battle stations with squadrons of lawyers fighting off another 4,200 cases, apparently willing to risk a few more bad verdicts while hoping to weed out the weakest cases and wear the opposition down in order to save on final settlement costs of the strongest claims.
Yet all of that meant little to the stock analysts. “Oh, they’ve already reserved for that stuff,” one of them told me during a coffee break. He meant that in Johnson & Johnson’s financials, there had been money taken from earnings and put into a column vaguely called “accrued liabilities,” in order to account for the expected billions that might still have to be paid out in verdicts or settlements.
“It’s their cost of doing business,” the analyst added, perhaps unintentionally echoing the view of one senior J&J lawyer who told me that the cases against his company are the unavoidable price of dealing with a litigation system easily abused by those targeting big corporations.
“All the big pharmas” have lawsuits, the analyst concluded, sipping an espresso. “It’s just not a big deal.”
Indeed, with before-tax profits of $20.6 billion for 2014, putting aside $500 million or even $1 billion a year over 15 years to cover payouts for boys with 46DD breasts and other claims that might come along doesn’t put much of a dent in the company’s financials. As Johnson & Johnson declared in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission three weeks before the analysts’ conference, “In the Company’s opinion … the ultimate outcome of legal proceedings, net of liabilities accrued in the Company’s balance sheet, is not expected to have a material adverse effect on the Company’s financial position.”
Thus, as Johnson & Johnson’s press materials habitually point out, the company has recorded 51 years of increases in the dividends paid to shareholders.
“All the big pharmas have lawsuits,” the analyst concluded, sipping an espresso. “It’s just not a big deal.”"
Freedom is not a state. It is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau.. Freedom is a continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.-John Lewis