Michael Cockson in Minnesota Lawyer on Favorable Outcome for Firm Client

Faegre Baker Daniels partner Michael Cockson led the defense in a case involving biotechnology company Biothera which resulted in a surprising ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black. Judge Black ordered Medpace, the plaintiff in the case, to pay the entire amount Biothera had requested, $931,399, in attorney and expert witness fees as a sanction for Medpace's systemic failure to produce information.

Biothera hired Medpace in 2009 to create a clinical development program that would assemble data for the FDA to get a new cancer drug approved. Biothera, unsatisfied with the work product of Medpace, terminated the contract. "This is a highly regulated area, Cockson told Minnesota Lawyer. "You've got to have this information for the FDA." The contract termination resulted in Medpace suing Biothera in March 2012 for breach of contract and quantum meruit for outstanding fees of more than $5 million.

Medpace's refusal to turn over the data that they had compiled resulted in years of litigation, and ultimately led Judge Black to issue a preliminary injunction, ordering Medpace to turn over the files. Medpace turned over incomplete files, releasing information slowly over the course of two years. "We didn't want to make any incorrect assumptions. We got confirmation that the materials were all there," Cockson said. "Then Biothera's experts said there were critical items that should be in the file that were not, meaning that the research was either not performed or not produced."

Cockson told Minnesota Lawyer that this case provides two important lessons for attorneys. He said it's critical that lawyers and IT people are on the same page when a company is responding to discovery. "Long gone are the days where you'd send associates to a warehouse to dig through files. Now that we're going into the cloud, we've disbursed where information is." He said that the second lesson is that "persistent ethical advocacy pays off."