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# Reichel Acquittal Won’t Stop DoJ: Attorneys
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/reichel-acquittal-wont-stop-doj-attorneys/
- Published: 2016-06-23T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T21:11:37.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5136030

The Massachusetts federal jury [acquittal](https://www.fdaweb.com/ex-drug-co-head-found-not-guilty-in-kickback-scheme/) of former Warner Chilcott president **W. Carl Reichel** on charges of conspiring to pay kickbacks to doctors won’t stop the Department of Justice from trying to hold company executives accountable for wrongdoing, according to three Paul Hastings attorneys. Writing in an online blog [post](http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=61097516-e8f7-4397-94f2-a8b37d99b9f1&ref=fdaweb.com), the three review the government’s case against Reichel and ask whether the Justice Department may return to using the Park Doctrine (a 1975 Supreme Court decision that provided the foundation for modern-day responsible corporate officer liability) to go after individual defendants when it is unable to show that the defendant acted knowingly and willfully.

“While this acquittal is a notable loss for the government, and not its first one against individual pharmaceutical defendants, history has shown that DoJ will continue to investigate and prosecute cases of individual wrongdoing,” they write, “especially in this post-*Yates* era. However, the question may now become whether the government will demand even more breadth and depth of cooperation from companies in order to meet the *Yates* requirements and to prosecute successfully its cases, or, as it has in the recent past, whether it will decline to pursue these more difficult cases of affirmative wrongdoing in lieu of the more controversial, strict criminal liability, *Park* offenses.”

The post discusses these three takeaways from the Reichel decision: 

- DoJ will continue to focus on individual corporate wrongdoing. “The Reichel case demonstrates the difficulty in proving a corporate executive’s knowledge and intent to break the law,” the post says. “The government’s evidence against Reichel included the testimony of numerous former Warner Chilcott employees, many of whom were testifying pursuant to a plea agreement or grant of immunity provided years after Reichel purportedly engaged in the charged conduct. Reichel’s counsel argued, not surprisingly, that these witnesses lied about his role in the kickback scheme in an effort to obtain a break from the government for their own illegal conduct.” The attorneys say that rather than abandoning felony prosecutions of corporate executives altogether, in future cases the government will seek to improve the quality of its evidence through all available investigative techniques, including consensual recordings and wiretaps, and sources of information, including highly-placed cooperating individuals and cooperating corporations.
- The Yates memorandum will continue to guide corporate cooperation. “The acquittal of this one executive also does not change the *Yates* memorandum’s directive that companies under government investigation and seeking cooperation credit ‘must identify all individuals involved in or responsible for the misconduct at issue, regardless of their position, status, or seniority, and provide the DoJ all facts relating to that misconduct,’” the attorneys write…. “The government’s loss in the Reichel case will likely strengthen the resolve of the government to secure truly meaningful corporate cooperation in the hope that such cooperation will help it more successfully identify, investigate, and prosecute individual corporate wrongdoers.”
- Companies should take steps to “Park-proof” their executives. The post advises companies to implement and maintain compliance programs that reflect the “extraordinary care” taken to prevent and remediate violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It says they should also consider taking more affirmative and proactive steps to create demonstrable evidentiary records for their key executive and management personnel “in the event that the government comes knocking, and brings along the risk of *Park* prosecution.”