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Medical School, he had to control his shaking hand as he signed the contract. Four years later, he reluctantly closed the door behind him as he left for Frezin, one of Marcon’s top rivals and another of the Big Pharma companies. Frezin’s offer was too generous to turn down: his own research group, an excellent salary, bonuses for meeting or exceeding expectations in Phase I and Phase II trials, and totally flexible office hours.
    He excelled at Frezin, clearing the way for two new cholesterol drugs, one of which found a spot on the crowded shelves of America’s pharmacies and generated almost six hundred million in sales before the patent expired and the generics jumped in. His success in the research labs led to a high-level management position, at which he immediately excelled. He reworked the Frezin mindset on R&D, modeling it after what he had seen at Marcon.
    It worked. It worked very well. Frezin passed Marcon on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the bellwether Domini 400 Social Index, putting Frezin in the enviable position of being the new benchmark in pharmaceutical research and development. His salary went through the roof, and his bonuses eclipsed his wages. He had found his niche and was enjoying huge personal success, despite the public’s dislike and distrust of the pharmaceutical giants. Bruce Andrews often looked back on the day that 260-pound lineman crushed his knee as a great day in his life.
    But even with all the perks and the money, he was, in his own mind, still a lowly vice president. He coveted the top position, but after a few years he realized that he was not moving in that direction. The upper echelons of Frezin were powerful and connected, and he was not one of the chosen. He realized that if he were to ever achieve the position of CEO, it would entail moving to a competitor. He found a heavyweight headhunter and the search to find a company that needed a CEO was under way.
    Veritas Pharmaceutical was not a major player in the industry, but neither was it a lightweight. Four drugs with household names were under patent, and three more were in the pipeline. Wall Street was behind Veritas and investor confidence was high. What they lacked was vision. And when the board of directors interviewed Bruce Andrews, they knew they had found their visionary.
    Andrews’s agent drafted a ten-year contract, collected a huge finder’s fee, and disappeared back where he came from. Andrews planted himself in the corner office and took stock of his new empire. The company had annual sales of six hundred million, which Andrews considered low, considering the company had four drugs still under patent on the market. Their R&D budget was $162 million, marketing $73 million, and administration $12 million. Legal fees and payments on class-action suits ran to almost $200 million, courtesy of an FDA recall on Haldion, a drug that was designed to reduce blood pressure but actually caused heart palpitations. Not heart attacks or death, at least not that had been proven—simply palpitations. Veritas had pulled the drug from the market, but the damage was done. The ambulance chasers were all over it, and tort suits kept appearing, even seven years after the negative reports had chased Haldion from the shelves.
    Andrews rearranged the financing within his first three months as CEO. R&D remained constant at just under $170 million, but marketing shot up to $240 million. He brought in a team of image consultants and lawyers, and focused on stopping the bleeding from the class-action suits on Haldion. The first tort action against Veritas after he took the helm was from a medium-size law firm in Kansas. Andrews unleashed his new legal team on the unsuspecting lawyers and let them know that the free ride was over. Every legal action against Veritas as a result of a client suffering from the side effects of Haldion would be vigorously challenged in court. No more cash.
    The majority of claims