November 11, 2014
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Pfizer today responded to allegations of election law impropriety that first cropped up in an October 28 New York Times article. The article revolved around a dinner attorney Lori Kalani of law firm Dickstein Shapiro working on behalf of Pfizer, AT&T and others, had with several states’ attorney generals, specifically Missouri’s Chris Koster.
Pfizer’s Executive Vice President Douglas Lankler and chief general counsel responded with a letter to the editor published October 9. The letter points out that the negotiations that occurred were common and not inappropriate. “It is in the public interest for parties involved in legal disputes to engage directly with state attorneys general to explore fair and efficient resolutions to these matters, which is what occurred in this case.”
The letter goes on to state that Pfizer complied with state election law disclosure requirements and voluntarily published a semiannual report of all political contributions.
Of particular concern in the original article isn’t Pfizer, but Living Essentials, the company that manufactures 5-Hour Energy, also represented by Dickstein Shapiro. More than 30 states were investigating the company for deceptive advertising, including Missouri. The original article stated, “Ms. Kalani’s firm, Dickstein Shapiro, had courted the attorney general at dinners and conferences and with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Mr. Koster told Ms. Kalani that he was unaware of the investigation, and he reached for his phone and called his office. By the end of the weekend, he had ordered his staff to pull out of the inquiry, a clear victory for 5-Hour Energy.”
Koster also later developed a new policy that requires his staff “to get approval from his top aides before opening any investigations involving a publicly traded company or any company with more than 10 employees.”
In terms of Pfizer, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office settled a fraud investigation for $750,000, which according to the New York Times article was at least $350,000 below what it would have been if Missouri had been part of the multistate investigation. Pfizer also directly donated $20,000 to Koster’s political campaigns over several years.
The New York Times article points out that attorneys generals are now being regularly pursued by lobbyists and lawyers, using campaign contributions, corporate-sponsored conferences and “other means to push them to drop investigations, change policies, negotiate favorable settlements or pressure federal regulators.” Although there are numerous regulations and rules regarding lobbying and other elected officials, there are few governing state attorneys generals.
“The current and increasing level of the lobbying of attorneys general creates, at the minimum, the appearance of undue influence, and is therefore unseemly,” said James Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine in the Times article. He is currently a professor at Columbia University studying state attorneys general. “It is undermining the credibility of the office of attorney general.”
