$12.75 Million Sent to Outbreak Victims

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A little over 500 of the victims from a 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak have won approval for payment from a $40 million fund being administered by the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.
According to office spokeswoman Chloe Gotsis, thus far 371 checks totaling $12.75 million were sent out in two waves for applicants who were found eligible. The first set of checks went out in December of last year. A second wave went out in March.
Overall she said 538 of the 748 applicants have been approved for payment. Approximately 262 of those claimants have been paid in full.
She said a third wave is expected to go out this summer. She noted that applicants must submit their applications by a June 30 deadline. That deadline already has been extended twice.
The fund was obtained from a national fund maintained by the U.S. Justice Department.
Michigan Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop led the efforts to get approval for the fund. His district was among the hardest hit.
The 2012 outbreak was cause by contaminated steroids manufactured by the now defunct New England Compounding Center which was located in Framingham, Mass. At least 76 victims died out of a total of 778 who were sickened.
Information on the application process can be found at https://www.mass.gov/mass-necc-program.
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NECC Owner Denied Separate Trial

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A bid to have a separate trial by a former part owner of a defunct drug compounding company has been denied in a brief order from a federal judge.
In the order U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns wrote that Gregory Conigliaro, one time vice president and part owner of the New England Compounding Center, will be tried along with nine other defendants beginning in early October.
That trial will come on the sixth anniversary of the deadly fungal meningitis outbreak caused by fungus riddled steroids shipped from NECC's Framingham, Mass. offices. Seventy six patients from 20 states died after being injected with NECC's drugs.
Conigliaro's lawyer had argued that Conigliaro, who faces a single conspiracy charge, would be unduly prejudiced by the evidence against co-dfendants facing multiple charges.
Stearns, however, concluded that instructions to jurors could avert any prejudice.
He also noted that he already has ruled that evidence of deaths and illnesses from the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak cannot be used at the upcoming trial.
Stearns said he was confident his ruling would enable the jury to focus its attention "on the actual allegations that remain against the defendants."
He also cited the "cardinal principle" that the law favors the joint trial of defendants who are indicted together to "prevent inconsistent verdicts and to conserve judicial and prosecutorial resources."
Conigliaro was one of 14 indicted following a two year federal probe of the deadly outbreak. Two. of those defendants, Barry Cadden and Glenn Chin, are already serving lengthy prison sentences following their conviction on racketeering and conspiracy charges.
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Judge Bars Testimony on Outbreak Deaths

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

In a major setback to prosecutors, a federal judge has ruled that testimony and evidence of deaths caused in a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak can not be used in the upcoming trial of 10 defendants linked to the company blamed for the outbreak.
In a 17-page ruling issued today in Boston, Mass., U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled that the evidence and testimony of deaths would be highly prejudicial to the ten defendants who have not been charged with causing any of the deaths or involvement in the production of the contaminated drug that killed 76 people.
As Stearns noted prosecutors already had agreed not to present autopsy reports or elicit testimony from the next of kin of deceased victims.
Instead they said testimony would be limited to a CDC official, Dr. Benjamin Park, who played a key role in the prior trials of Barry J. Cadden and Glenn Chin. Cadden was president and part owner of the New England Compounding Center while Chin was a supervising pharmacist for the company. Both are now serving lengthy prison terms.
But Stearns ruled that even within those limitations agreed to by prosecutors, the effect would be highly prejudicial.
"I am convinced that the proposed evidence of patients' deaths and injuries entails a substantial risk that jurors will decide the case 'on an improper basis rather than on the evidence presented," Stearns wrote.
In the decision Stearns struck down one by one the series of arguments put forward by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Strachan and George Varghese.
He faulted prosecutors for failing to distinguish between two separate racketeering enterprises alleged in the original 2014 indictment. One, he wrote, involved murder and grievous injury, while the other did not. In addition he noted that both Cadden and Chin were cleared by separate juries of the murder/racketeering charges.
Stearns also rejected the argument by prosecutors that evidence of the deaths was necessary as a scene-setting device.
"The need for this information is slight and the liklihood of misuse is great," Stearns wrote.
Calling one argument of prosecutors "unfathomable," Stearns noted that Park's testimony in the Cadden and Chin trials was particularly detailed.
Park, he wrote "is a convincing witness and by all accounts one of the true heroes that emerges in the tragic story of the
response to the fungal meningitis outbreak."
While acknowledging that some of Park's testimony would be relevant to the charges against the remaining defendants, Stearns said, "the evidentiary shards are impossible to isolate from his more dramatic description of mass-scale injury and death related to the the tainted methylpredniolone acetate."
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