Pfizer moves to dismiss lawsuit by claiming government was co-conspirator
Attorney Robert Barnes Sunday shared an update in the lawsuit against Pfizer Inc by whistleblower Brook Jackson.
Jackson, who worked as the regional director at Ventavia, was fired in 2020 for sounding the alarm on Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA clinical trials, reported Frontline News.
The pharma giant had contracted with Ventavia to oversee the crucial Phase III clinical trials that needed to be passed for the vaccine to be granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia assigned Jackson to oversee two of the three clinical trial sites.
But the clinical researcher says she was shocked by what she saw.
“Although my time with this company was brief, the misconduct that I witnessed was so blatant and so widespread that I documented numerous violations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Code of Federal Regulations every, single day,” wrote Jackson.
Among Jackson’s allegations are that Ventavia, Pfizer and ICON – another clinical research group contracted by Pfizer – had “deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question.”
According to the suit, the companies also “concealed violations of both their clinical trial protocol and federal regulations, including falsification of clinical trial documents.”
“Due to Defendants’ scheme, millions of Americans have received a misbranded vaccination which is potentially not as effective as represented,” alleges the lawsuit.
Jackson’s attorney Robert Barnes said in an interview with Viva Frei Sunday that Pfizer filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, essentially claiming that even if the allegations are true, the U.S. government endorsed it by purchasing 100 million doses for $1.95 billion.
“Pfizer has moved to dismiss the case, and their grounds to dismiss as they repeated in the scheduling conference we had this week is that it doesn’t matter if they had submitted fraudulent certifications to the government,” said Barnes. “It doesn’t matter if they submitted false statements under penalty of perjury to the government. It doesn’t matter if they lied about the safety and efficacy of these drugs mislabeled, in my opinion, as vaccines, because the government was in on it with them! The government knows what’s going on and the government still would have given them the check anyway! So is it really fraud if the government’s their co-conspirator? That is in essence Pfizer’s defense so far to the case.”
Barnes also noted that judge Michael J. Truncale has entitled the plaintiffs to discovery on Pfizer’s motion, which means that Barnes is now entitled to scrutinize all the documents Pfizer submitted to the court concerning its claim.
“It was a fascinating defense,” Barnes marveled. “A fascinating defense to say, ‘Yeah, maybe we lied, but even if we did, it doesn’t matter because some high-ranking government people were in on the lie.’ I don’t think that’s a defense the court’s ultimately going to buy.”
Barnes noted that despite Pfizer’s army of lawyers that were in the courtroom and out, they have not been able to rid themselves of the suit.
“Their goal was for this case to go away right away and for them not to have to disclose a single piece of information, a single piece of documentation, and just for them to be able to walk out without any consequence because too often that has happened with big drug companies in America.”
Jackson has pledged to donate all damages awarded to her in United States of America ex rel. Brooks Jackson v. Ventavia Research Group, LLC et al. to vaccine victims.