Ruling Undercuts Sarbanes-Oxley Protection

GAP client Mark Livingston has lost a federal appeals court decision, which has effectively rejected his assertions that he should be protected under Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protections for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals’ termination of him for exposing a lack of adequate safety training among company workers.

Livingston was hired by Wyeth to ensure the safety of Prevnar, an infant vaccine. Prevnar is one of several early childhood vaccines recommended for every newborn infant by physician organizations, the Centers for Disease Control, and the United States government.

In the course of his tenure at Wyeth, Livingston made repeated complaints relating to lack of compliance with regulatory GMP. He complained that the company did not compliantly train new employees in critical manufacturing and quality assurance positions fast enough in the years 1999-2002 to keep pace with production and sales goals of Prevnar.

According to Livingston, Wyeth repeatedly announced both internally and publicly, that failure to meet Consent Decree and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) mandates would negatively impact the company's future. Instead, Wyeth Sanford management kept the production pipeline flowing despite the lack of compliance, therefore materially misrepresenting the true state of operating and financial performance in this fastest growing division of the Wyeth enterprise. The plaintiff spent two years sounding the alarm that those mandates were not being met.   

Mr. Livingston was fired in December 2002 for blowing the whistle on noncompliant training system practices.

Livingston is expected to appeal this recent court decision.

-- Dylan Blaylock