Tom Berreman

The Cosgrove Trials Tom Berreman

Jamaal Harris escaped a childhood of poverty and violence in a Washington D. C. ghetto by graduating valedictorian from George Washington University and climbing the corporate ladder to vice president of product development at Hayden Laboratories, a Baltimore pharmaceutical company. His first major assignment as vice president is to manage the FDA review and approval of Xylophene, a drug that treats migraine patients by redirecting the electrical and chemical impulses from the base of the brain to the blood vessels at the top of the brain, stopping their contractions and the reduction of blood flow that causes severe migraine pain. Company marketing research shows that the value of Xylophene's commercial introduction will be the impetus for the company to launch a significant public stock offering or to be acquired by a larger competitor, creating substantial wealth for company insiders. It will also make the 100,000 stock options Jamaal had accepted in lieu of a salary increase when he was promoted to vice president worth millions. Before Jamaal is able to realize his stock option wealth he discovers clinical trial notes written by an unknown doctor describing potentially catastrophic side effects associated with the drug. Disclosure of the trial notes will delay, or even prevent, FDA approval, and he is torn between the incredible wealth his stock options will generate if Xylophene is approved and his ethical commitment to preventing the harm that could fall upon patients prescribed the medication. But unknown to Jamaal, powerful forces both inside and outside the company with much more at stake than his stock options, from company management to a Columbian cocaine dealer to the White House, will use whatever means available to them, all unethical, most illegal, to see that Xylophene is approved. Jamaal resigns in frustration after Andrew Hayden III, the company's third generation president, refuses to slow Xylophene's introduction by ordering independent verification of the unknown doctor's clinical trials. Only days later the FDA approves Xylophene and Hayden Labs announces it is being acquired by an international conglomerate at a significant premium over its current market value. Jason Burke, Jamaal's college roommate and a trial lawyer with the silk stocking Baltimore firm of Chatfield & Smythe, files a securities fraud lawsuit seeking to recover the value of Jamaal's forfeited stock options, claiming the company's management had a duty to inform him of the impending sale before he resigned. Company insiders with more than great wealth at stake attempt to make the case go away quietly, concerned that additional focus on Jamaal's involvement with Xylophene's FDA review may uncover the undisclosed, dangerous side effects and jeopardize the company's sale. But Burke pushes forward with the trial, causing many with a vested interest in Xylophene's approval to take extreme measures to stop him, but to no avail. After trial testimony uncovers the previously undisclosed side effects, White House manipulation of Xylophene's FDA approval for political reasons, and blackmail and murder by overleveraged investors who would be ruined if the drug is not approved, Jamaal finds himself as the only one who can stop the catastrophic events he had envisioned when he gave up millions and resigned instead of taking part in the approval of a potentially dangerous drug.