Owners Sought to Save Sister Drug Firm

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Even as a federal investigation was heating up, the owners of a Massachusetts drug compounding firm launched a last ditch effort to save a sister firm also facing regulatory scrutiny.
Records in Massachusetts show the effort to rescue Ameridose included the hiring of a politically connected firm to lobby on the firm's behalf. Ameridose, now defunct, had the same shareholders as the New England Compounding Center, the company blamed for a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.
The outbreak, which became public in October of 2012, ultimately sickened 778 patients, killing at least 76 of them.
Registering as a lobbyist on Ameridose's behalf in late 2012 was O'Neill and Associates, headed by Thomas P. O'Neill, 3rd, a former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor and the son of longtime U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr.
Also registering as an Ameridose lobbyist was the Boston law firm of Donoghue Barrett and Singal.
Listed as the goal of that firm was "to reopen Ameridose to save several hundred jobs."
The firm's report also stated, "No salary paid directly to lobbyist by client."
In one of its filings, O'Neill and Associates listed its role as "Legislative and regulatory issues related to pharmacy compounding."
Like NECC, Ameridose shut down voluntarily shortly after the outbreak became public. The closure followed critical state and federal inspections of the Westborough, Mass. facility.
Both lobbying firms reported earning only $20,000 apiece in the unsuccessful effort to get Ameridose reopened.
Registered in late 2012 the two lobbying firms subsequently withdrew in the first half of 2013.
The Donohue Barrett Singal firm, however, would later surface as the attorneys for NECC's president Barry J. Cadden in a 2017 criminal trial.
Bruce Singal, the former executive director of the Massachusetts Consumers Council. was Cadden's lead attorney in a marathon trial. Cadden, 51, who is now serving a nine year federal prison sentence, was convicted of racketeering, conspiracy and mail fraud charges but cleared of second degree murder/racketeering charges.
Andrew Paven, an employee of O'Neill and Associates, said he recalled that the firm did register as a lobbyist for Ameridose, but their efforts soon came to naught.
"To be honest there wasn’t really anything we could do for them; that die was cast," Paven wrote in an email response to questions.
Members off O'Neill firm, Massachusetts lobbying records show, collected $1,791,699 for lobbying services in the same year from its other clients.
Massachusetts records show that former employees of Ameridose, along with other related firms, did qualify for emergency assistance for retraining.