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.

auto-complete is at fault?

I notice the software is being blamed rather than the user.

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

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!

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

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?

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

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 [typepad.com] , 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 [wikipedia.org] , 403 U.S. 713 [cornell.edu] (1971) (5-to-3 ruling prohibiting prior restraint and allowing NYT to print the top-secret "Pentagon Papers").

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

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!

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that putting a notice at the bottom of a message creates a legally binding contract.

--
NOTICE: This message is distributed under the Slashdot Propriety License. By reading this message, you agree to moderate this message "+1 Informative" if you have mod points, otherwise to send $1,000 in small unmarked bills to the author. Failure to adhere to the terms of the license (which, if you are still reading at this point, you have already agreed to) will result in your being prosecuted under the terms of the DMCA and thrown in a small unheated cell on Guantanamo.

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

And how are you going to prove that I agreed to it? As you pointed out in your own message, these are a joke. How exactly are you going to extort that $1,000 out of me? How are you going to force me to turn it over? You can't prove in court that I agreed to your license because you provided the goods before you had my signature or other agreement. Software licenses and real-world goods licenses don't give you the goodies until AFTER you agree.

If someone emails me something and then whines about what I do with it, perhaps they should have come to me first and said "I'm sending you (x), but if I do, will you not do (y) with it?" and then only sent it after I agreed? THAT would be enforceable.

The lawyer is SOL.

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

Mod points wasted. AAAL, and I assure you it doesn't, any more than reading your signature creates a contractual obligation on my part to mod your posts "Informative" or send you money.

Also, since settlement information is excluded from evidence when trying to prove culpability, and never reaches the finder of fact in a court case anyway, this whole story is pretty pointless. While the leak may have a modest effect on stock prices, the fact that Eli Lilly attempted to settle and the amount in question couldn't possibly matter less in the case at bar.

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

I heard from corporate counsel at a previous job that, at least up here in Canada, it is *not* legally binding. The company still used them, but they viewed it more as a request ("please delete this"), with maybe a little scare tactic ("or legal consequences may apply") thrown in for good measure.

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

The unheated cells are the nice ones. The heated ones are in the same wing as the ones with "running water".

Re:auto-complete is at fault?

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.

***Legal Notice*** and I mean it.

If you are not the intended recipient of this response, please disregard and forget this posting.

You are legally binded from reading, forwarding, printing, copying, remembering, discussing or in any other way acknowledging this post.

I am planning on robbing the bank on Fifth and Elm. Do not alert the police. Meet me at the warehouse after.

captcha:overlook

New feature! Auto-complete your career!

Tired of that pesky work getting in the way of having fun? No problems, with our new email auto-complete, work will never be a problem again. Tired of looking competent. Too few opportunties to end your career over a simple typo? Problem solved with auto-complete. People will blame you the dumb user for making the smallest mistake at any time of the day or night and regardless of your workload. With auto-complete your career is guaranteed to end in the jiffiest of jiffies.

This happens to me all the time!

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: [e-mail] or [e-mail] becomes [e-mail].

I don't know what Eli Lilly's lawyers charge

but I'm sure they can afford PGP/gnupg AND a highschool kid to show them how to use it.

It's funny, you know ...

but if I were running a major law firm that regularly handled confidential matters for multi-billion dollar clients ... I'd certainly encrypt the Hell out of every communication that left my offices. I mean, all they had to do was install some free (free!) encryption software like PGP, and there'd have been no problem.

Huh. I'll bet they will now.

Very Nasty Stuff

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.

Re:Very Nasty Stuff

Whats to blame is the psychiatrists. They're virtually trained (and not by the big pharams, though they don't help) that meds are the cure to everything, as opposed to psychologists. I remember reading statistics showing that the VAST majority of people who go see a psychiatrist end up with a prescription, regardless of if they truly had problems.

The best example is the insane amount of kids with an ADD diagnostic... sure, there ARE people who are truly chemically imbalanced and such, and need treatments of some kind...I really feel for these people. The rest just need some discipline stuck in their head. As far as I know (and I know quite a few people in the field), most people getting these prescriptions don't even pass a fraction of the tests that would be required to make a proper diagnostic. The psychiatrist just go by "guts feeling".

And then you end up on mind control medication.... You're "better", but you're not "you" anymore... Some treatments are required... some mental illness CAN be treated... but in general, whats available right now is just a big cash cow, not treatments.

Re:Very Nasty Stuff

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.

Um, no.

Some online observers are speculating that auto-complete is to blame, but this has not been confirmed.

As I tried to explain to one of the Three Letter Acronyms of our company this morning, "Auto-Complete" is not to blame. "Not Paying Attention" is to blame. If you can't be bothered to look at who you are sending stuff like this to, then please step back from the computer and have someone else handle complicated things like email for you.

Surely if you are doing billion dollar deals then you can afford to hire someone capable of working a keyboard without embarrassing him or herself.

Pardon the pedantry...misleading headline

The headline is misleading. Eli Lilly was going to pay the $1 billion anyway, regardless of who received the email. They simply didn't want anyone to know about that.

Why was the address there?

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.

Tell Me About It

Dudes, you should see the crazy shit I get.

Signed,
Pritchard Cheney

I take ten milligrams of Zyprexa every day

I take it for my schizoaffective disorder [geometricvisions.com]. I didn't make the decision to take Zyprexa lightly - I was and still am concerned it could give me diabetes.

But schizoaffective disorder is a devastating illness: it's just like being manic-depressive and schizophrenic at the same time. The risperdal I took previously for my psychotic symptoms wasn't working anymore. From 2003 through 2007, I was in the emergency room five times for psychiatric reasons, culminating in an ambulance ride to the mental ward, where I stayed for three weeks.

The Zyprexa completely eliminates the paranoia and visual hallucinations I would otherwise have almost all the time. It also brought me down from the bipolar mania that led to my ambulance ride, and prevents me from getting manic anymore.

As a result of taking it, I am able to hold a steady job - and a good one - as a software engineer, to provide for my wife and to pay her University tuition.

I've heard rumours that Zyprexa might be withdrawn from the market. I really hope that doesn't happen, as I've never had a medicine work so well.

Happened to me once...

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 [knodi.com]

Re:The best part is,

If these guys would use PGP or some other form of encryption, then even if you did send something critical like that to the wrong address, it wouldn't be so devastating. The technology to protect email has been around for nearly twenty years.