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A $1 Billion Email Gaffe

Posted by kdawson on from the oops-with-nine-zeros dept.

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.

11 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. This happens to me all the time! by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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  2. Re:auto-complete is at fault? by fohat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

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  3. Very Nasty Stuff by grumpygrodyguy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:Very Nasty Stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're supposed to tell your Doctor if you experience urges of that kind while taking Zyprexa, it's one of the side effects some people experience. Now, the vast majority - myself included - are effectively treated with no side-effects and can therefore go on to lead productive and happy lives. And Zyprexa is a hell of a lot better than the previous treatment, haldol, which is a butcher of a medication. So much so that the instant Zyprexa, an effective replacement, became available haldol was dropped like the proverbial hot-potato. Also Zyprexa will not cause uncontrollable muscle movement after 20 years like haldol.

  4. Re:auto-complete is at fault? by Gat0r30y · · Score: 5, Interesting

    probably had a confidentiality notice One would hope a lawyer working at a major law firm on a sensitive case would be required to have a confidentiality notice. I guess the question is, how do you know if you aren't the intended recipient? The guy must be in his address book? How does he know he's not just getting a hot tip from a disgruntled lawyer / whistleblower? Even if you are fairly certain you aren't the intended recipient, do those canned confidentiality sigs mean anything anyway? IANAL, anyone who knows a little better care to inform?
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  5. Why was the address there? by grub · · Score: 5, Interesting


    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.

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  6. Re:auto-complete is at fault? by mbstone · · Score: 5, Interesting
    As between lawyers, if the errant email had reached the opposing lawyer there are a number of attorney ethics rules, as well as court decisions, that basically say that the other lawyer must return any mis-transmitted documents and must not use the information. (Yeah surrre.) See Perlman, Untangling Ethics Theory From Attorney Conduct Rules: The Case of Inadvertent Disclosures , 13 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 767 (2005).

    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").

  7. Re:auto-complete is at fault? by xaxa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Happened to me once... by knodi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

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  9. Re:auto-complete is at fault? by gruntled · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

  10. Re:auto-complete is at fault? by rs79 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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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