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A $1 Billion Email Gaffe
Jake writes in with the story behind an explosive NYTimes scoop last week. It seems that the Times's pharmaceutical industry reporter, Alex Berenson, scored a page-one blockbuster when he revealed that Eli Lilly was looking to reach a settlement with federal prosecutors over the company's alleged inappropriate marketing of anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa. A settlement figure of $1 billion was mentioned. This scoop dropped into Berenson's inbox when a lawyer for one of Lilly's retained firms mis-addressed an email to a colleague with the same last name as that of the Times reporter. Some online observers are speculating that auto-complete is to blame, but this has not been confirmed.
Update: 02/08 17:19 GMT by KD : Jake writes in with an update: it seems that while Berenson did receive a misdirected e-mail from Pepper Hamilton, that e-mail did not contain a detailed description of the status of the Eli Lilly settlement talks. Berenson got his story from other sources.
Update: 02/08 17:19 GMT by KD : Jake writes in with an update: it seems that while Berenson did receive a misdirected e-mail from Pepper Hamilton, that e-mail did not contain a detailed description of the status of the Eli Lilly settlement talks. Berenson got his story from other sources.
I've gotten stuff from all sorts of folks - including the Times - because my gmail address is just may last name, and people seem to always forget to include the first letter of a first name, or they leave off stuff before a period: bob.smith@gmail.com or bsmith@gmail.com becomes smith@gmail.com.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Agreed, this is more likely to be a PEBKAC.
If the info was confidential it probably had a confidentiality notice at the bottom of it, stating that if you are not the intended recipient that you aren't allowed to do anything with the email. I saw one of those sig's today and started to wonder if that was legally binding in any way. Maybe we will find out now!
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
Zyprexa
I was on this terrible crap for a while...after 2 weeks I had gained 15 pounds (not exaggerating).
I remember finding myself on the candy Isle at the supermarket shoveling 12-packs of twix, snickers, and all kinds of other candy into my shopping cart...and I usually don't eat sweets.
These 'medications' are really horrible...it's sad that so many people believe schizophrenia is easily treated with them. Big pharma marketdroids are mostly to blame. In fact, after 6 months, 80% of the people on these medications quit (I suspect the other 20% are forced to take it by hospital staff)...they actually prefer being crazy (unable to work, take care of themselves, go to public places, etc.) rather than take them...the side-effects are that bad.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Why was the reporter's email address already in the lawyer's address book? They should check his mail logs and see what else he send to that person before.
Trolling is a art,
Not very-- especially if the email disclaimer makes unilateral demands and you have no prior relationship with the sender. On the other hand, if you previously agree to have a confidential discussion, and then break that agreement, the disclaimer might be enforcable. There's a site here:
...with more detailed analysis of this.
http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
The problem is that the lawyer was using the wrong piece of software.
If you're routinely dealing with communications that are sensitive, then you should be typing the full address in every time
Whole new use for Typosquatting.
Suddenly sjobs@aple.com, wbuffet@berksirehatheway.com, michael_dell@dall.com etc, etc, might have some additional value.
Or use lists that have been verified to be correct.
And how do you propose that? Run a completely separate mail identity for each case he works on, each with its own carefully vetted list of approved recipients? Nah, I can't see how that wouldn't be royally inconvenient and immune from errors.
What's funny is that the software ended up revealing a lot. Don't you find it interesting that one of the lawyers happened to have this reporter in their contact book?
Not particularly. Can you imagine a scenario where the reporter sent him an email at some point and he replied to it? Thats all it takes for the address to be added to the autocomplete feature. In some programs that's enough for the address to be added as a contact....
And while I'm sure most courts would agree with you, does that contract become void if sent to an incorrect party?
If a lawyer is upset at a ruling and leaks a confidential document to a newspaper intentionally, no amount of confidentiality disclaimers intended for the document's original target attached to the bottom of the document will stop the newspaper from running it.
I think the end point is that you can't force confidentiality on an unsuspecting party simply by sending them a piece of paper that says they are now legally bound, especially if you sent it unintentionally.
In order for a contract to exist their must be an exchange of value (value is not the right word IIRC... it might be 'consideration').
There is no exchange in merely putting a notice on the mail and hence no contract would exist.
It may be legally binding in some other way but not by virtue of it being a contract.
Quite so.
And how would the courts rule if the unintended recipient claimed to have only read the first two paragraphs? That might be all they need to get the crucial info, but how could they be held to a contract they never actually saw?
These types of court decisions would not, however, support a "prior restraint" such as a court order prohibiting the NYT from publishing the information, see, e.g., New York Times Co. v. United States , 403 U.S. 713 (1971) (5-to-3 ruling prohibiting prior restraint and allowing NYT to print the top-secret "Pentagon Papers").
My favourite: 3 days after I started University I got an email...
Hi Peter (not my name),
The amount for the chemistry building work is now confirmed as £85,000,000.00 exactly -- I've left a cheque on your desk, could you sign it please?
Cheers, Dave
Turns out that my relatively unusual surname is shared with the finance director at my university. For about a month I got a few of his emails, I assume because my first name is earlier in the alphabet.
Some guy bought a motion-sensitive webcam, pointed it out his window, and set it up to email him whenever it took a picture.
Except he misspelled his own email address, and the images started coming to me, a complete stranger.
I stitched all the shots together into this time-lapsed movie:
http://knodi.com/images/floral_park/time_lapse.gif
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
Why not just set up a separate user-space for each important case and only have the authorized contact information for that user-space/case available?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
First of all, if we got rid of all the lawyers, this would have never happened. As far as the disclaimers go, what if I acted on the contents of the email before got the bottom of the message? The disclaimers are always at the bottom of the message, perhaps scrolled off the screen where I couldn't see it yet. Couldn't I claim I never read the disclaimer?
Zyprexa is very good at calming the mind. It made it difficult to be physically active (or feel very awake at high dosages), but it was the most effective medication I've taken for positive symptoms. I hope it stays on the market, but I also hope due diligence is taken when psychiatrists prescribe it. Eight years ago, it was one of the first medications I tried, but three years ago, it was one of the last medications offered; it seems psychiatrists are being more careful about it (though with n=1, it's difficult to do anything more than hope that is the case).
About ten years ago, when I was covering the antitrust trial for the Mercury News, Microsoft's PR arm accidentally emailed me half of their internal database describing how they dealt with reporters and who each reporter's handler was and why. I looked at it, decided to be a nice guy, called the lady up and said, Hey, this isn't what I asked for, you sent the wrong stuff. So minutes later I get another email from her. This contains the *second* half of the confidential data base. Well, what could we do but make fun of them...
Look at the Delivered-To: and read uponm the SMTP RFC and you will understand that each mail that you recieve was intended for you from a reciever point of view.
The fact that the sender did not intended it to go to you (or to the whole company) is not the recievers fault, but the senders. If I send it to the wrong person, or if I do a reply-all, it will be I who is responsible, no matter how ling the disclaimer is I send.
If somebody sues you over such a disclaimer, send them disclaimers that they are agreeing to pay you X amount per recieved mail and then sue THEM. Then look how fast they will drop charges. If they keep on pressing, just use the identical arguments against them and collect money for free.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Thanks for that comment. With all the Tom Cruises of the world, crackpots, and media hysterics about 'psych drugs', you can't hear enough from the 'silent majority'. That is, the people who actually have mental disorders, and who've experienced an increased quality of life due to proper medication.
Personally, I could almost say that Zyprexa saved my life. It did play a part. Last year, I was suffering from a clinical depression, which progressed into a psychotic depression. I was locked in the clutches of depression while getting more and more paranoid and delusional. Luckily enough I didn't progress to outright hallucinations, although my perception of reality was certainly distorted.
If nothing had been done, I would be dead now. It was only a matter of time before I'd have taken my own life.
Luckily, I got help. Spent two weeks in the hospital, being given Zyprexa and Atarax, the former as an antipsychotic, the latter as an antidepressant. After two weeks (when the antidepressants had kicked in) I was released, and continued with them for six months. Today, I'm competely back to normal.
Now, I can't really compare Zyprexa to other drugs; this is the only time I've had such an episode, and hopefully never again. But I can say that the drugs DO work. And work well.
And I'll also say that I've got no history of any mental disorders (or in my family). Most people consider me to be a very stable person, mentally and emotionally. Point is, while we don't all have the misfortune of having a chronic disorder, a psychotic episode can literally happen to anyone.
I had a client back in the mid 90s whose last name was watson and he grabbed watson.com; I ran the email for him. I handled the postmaster account, he didn't want to.
I got a bounced mail from somebody at ibm. Every other address on the line was to "watson.ibm.com". Just not this one.
Long story short after about five of these over a few months I finally got a thing about secret nucular testing. I called them and explained what they did.
Never saw another one, ever.
I'm guessing somebody didn't get their xmas bonus that year.
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