In the rarified circles of classical liberal/libertarian debate, I come across debates about whether companies could or should enjoy statutory limited liability (protecting beneficial owners of said from being sued for their wealth if there is an issue.) Like intellectual property rights (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc) this is a fraught area creating fierce debate among people who normally agree on a great deal.
LL laws protect people who have beneficial ownership from losing everything short of the clothes they stand in. Another, perhaps related limitation of exposure, however, stems from emergency situations, such as the pandemic. I think this is an issue that eventually is going to bite.
Consider the way that the drug manufacturers who developed and sold COVID-19 vaccines, such as Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca, were last year granted exemption from liabilities by the governments of various countries, such as the UK.
The companies, perhaps understandably given the relative speed with which they were approved to distribute the vaccines, and the urgency of the situation, wanted an assurance they wouldn’t be sued. So they got those protections. The attitude at the time seemed to be that we were in a sort of war. Consider this WW2 example: Rolls Royce did not want to be sued by people if its Merlin engines in the Spitfire, Mosquito and other aircraft went wrong. Makers of radar equipment and all the rest of it did not want to be sued. So possibly the thinking last year was the same about vaccines. The threats of class-action lawsuits would kill innovation stone dead.
As the months, and now years, go by, the balance I think is going to shift, particularly if the severity of the virus in terms of its lethality is shown to have declined not just because of vaccines but down to development of immunity in populations, and other factors. In that case, is it really credible that makers of vaccines, and distributors of said, can escape the constraints of normal commercial/criminal liability?
After all, we have seen how, in the US, the Sackler family – owners of the Purdue Pharma business – have been hit by mass lawsuits over opioids. Although it won immunity to further lawsuits, as reported here.
Forgive me, gentle readers, if these comments appear disjointed. I was chatting to an investment banker about all this, and he agreed that the immunity these manufacturers have carved out should not be open-ended. At the very least, lawmakers, if they are doing their job, and want to build trust in vaccines and so on, ought to consider how to address this issue. For some people, the immunity of these firms might be a reason why they refuse to take the vaccine. The Law of Unintended Consequences.
On a perhaps more positive tack, the fact that vaccines were rolled out and approved with such speed does suggest that when the heat is on, bureaucracy can be removed as much as possible. And this begs the question about how much regulatory protection and how much bureaucracy to oversee it is really necessary.
Good intentions don’t work. Following the law doesn’t work. For a long time, builders used asbestos, because it was the best, most affordable, fire containment and barrier available. Building codes required fireproofing. The government and the bureaucrats smiled benignly upon them.
Then it was discovered you could get lung cancer from asbestos. It was a good idea to stop using it. The asbestos companies should have extended medical benefits to their workers with lung cancer. But –
The lawyers attacked. Huge fines were levied. (I suspect most of the money was divided between the lawyers and the government.) Do good, get screwed. That seems to be the law these days. Insisting on immunity before sending out the product is the only reasonable thing to do.
Ah, there’s a bit missing from the analysis here. Vaccines always have the liability waiver.
https://www.gov.uk/vaccine-damage-payment
Vaccines always will kill some people. Not very many and all that, but some. Doing anything at all to millions of people will kill some. The benefits of vaccines are extremely high (that quarter of children dying before 1st birthday, another quarter before puberty in the old style absence of vaccines). So, governments take that burden of compensating those killed/injured because the public benefits are so large.
The waiver is normal. The only question that was under discussion was whether *this* vaccine was going to be one of those scheduled to be part of the compensation scheme. The answer was yes.
The annual ‘flu vaccine is included. Why wouldn’t ‘rona?
Vaccine makers have complete indemnity in the US. There’s even a Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that the makers pay into that’s administered by the government (which rarely pays out and pays out quite miserly). The indemnity is never going to go away.Thus the joys of regulatory capture.
In the US vaccine related woes have paid out, for 40+ years, of a fund (National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program – NCVICP) that the gov’t runs with industry and taxpayer funds. Apparently nobody really likes it, but it’s small taters, GDP-wise, and works well enough, so it continues to pay out. I should note that it works closely with our national health insurance for the indigent and old as most of the players fit into those categories.
I would also say that the legislatures could *easily* get around the drug manufacturers (and dispensers) legal liability caps by imposing proportional taxes into a similar fund. All that would require is legislative willpower. LOL.
-XC
In the US, the COVID vaccines are NOT covered under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), but are covered under the smaller Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). Damages through this program are capped, and only paid for serious physical injuries. In case you’re wondering, your life is worth #370,376.
When used for the H1N1 swine flu vaccine (which was withdrawn), it only paid out on 29 claims out of 551 claim filings. Making it next to useless.
Claims must be made within a very limited time frame (among other requirements). And injuries have to be on an approved list. No list has been made yet for the COVID vaccines.
“On a perhaps more positive tack, the fact that vaccines were rolled out and approved with such speed does suggest that when the heat is on, bureaucracy can be removed as much as possible.”
Meaning presumably that much of it is unnecessary and probably has a negative effect overall. It possibly provides employment for otherwise useless people. I have been surprised at how little disruption has been caused by giving a significant proportion of the population a year off on full pay. Leaving aside the cost being covered by borrowing and printing money, which might well come back to bite us on the arse further down the line, we seem to have a mass of people who can just stop doing their jobs without anyone noticing any difference. This isn’t just a pop at what are quite obviously non jobs. I retired just before all this kicked off. My job was repairing industrial machinery, and I thought that I was doing important work. My former colleagues were all furloughed last year, nobody noticed.
@Ruralcounsel is correct, but the payout mechanism (and capping values) are effectively the same. I am too lazy to look, but I bet the decision on which fund is used is NOT a legislative mechanism but is left to the FDA and, because the amount is so small, is ignored.
NPR (spit) had a (rare) great series some years ago on how these funds work.
-XC
In the US, at least, limited liability – i.e., the limitation that keeps me personally from being sued when the company in which I own stock has misbehaved – is predicated upon, among other things, a showing that the corporate body has been financed with sufficient assets such that if it does misbehave, it can shoulder its own responsibilities. Absent such a showing, the corporate veil may be pierced, and I may lose my house along with my shares of stock. “Insufficient capitalization” has been the death-knell of many corporate liability protections.
The vaccine liability protection is somewhat the same, in that there were established funds (taxpayor-financed, of course) so that people injured by vaccines would have some recourse. Not the open-ended recourse of normal civil court, where I might be awarded millions for the loss of my slackard brother-in-law, but a more realistic figure. As ruralcounsel points out above, a cap of $370k exists.
So the idea of legal liability limitation has usually been accompanied by the establishment of some alternative source of compensation. Without that limitation, though, who would ever invest in a corporation without taking on a leadership role? Who would ever distribute a vaccine without 20 years of testing? (Aside from the judgement-proof, of course.)
FWIW, with respect to limited liability corporations — I cannot think of a more libertarian thing. When I make a contract with a limited liability company I do so in the full knowledge that they are limited liability and what the consequences of that are. In a sense you are choosing between two competing systems of law — one with limited liability and one without. In fact, in the United States it goes even further. The specific laws that apply to a limited liability corporation vary quite materially between different states and you can effectively chose which legal system you want to operate under. Bobby mentioned piercing the corporate veil. I had an Illinois corporation that was sued and the lawyers used the threat of piercing the corporate veil (which is to say eliminating limited liability and making the shareholders personally responsible). My lawyer though the threat was credible enough that we just settled rather than take the risk. Now, my corps are in states like Nevada and Wyoming where piercing the corporate veil is close to impossible, and the law is rather more friendly than in the Socialist State of Illinois. So it is not moot, it is very real. The ideas behind limited liability makes very real the idea of competing legal systems — with limited scope, for sure, but David Friedman would be very happy. It is verging on anarcho capitalism.
From the other side NOT having limited liability is a selling point in some contexts. It used to be that professionals did not take on limited liability deliberately to indicate that they were fully exposed to the risk. In fact the very foundation of the world’s insurance market is founded on the fact the the Names who make up Lloyds of London are fully exposed to all risk. Perhaps if banks were not limited in liability our banking system would be dramatically more stable.
Vaccines, I think, are a bit of a different kettle of fish. On the one hand when patients decide to take the vaccine they may do so and accept the risk. However, when vaccines are mandated, or mandated to the point where you can’t live without it (irrespective of medical situations) then it is a different thing. Here the government is forcing you to take a risk, and forcing you to indemnify the cause of risk, and leaves you with no other options, which is just all sorts of wrong. It is further compounded by the massive stranglehold the government has on the supply of medical care through patents, regulation, lawsuits, licensure and many other ugly realities.
I cannot think of a less libertarian thing than limiting liability in tort on the basis of the absurd fiction that a company is a ‘legal person’ with a distinct existence, when it is a vehicle for people to conduct business. To ascribe ‘personality’ to a company is an absurd fantasy, no matter how long the concept has persisted. If a company is a person, it should sign its own contracts and explain its own position, and it needs no other people to be involved. Limited liability is a one-way bet. Let them all be like unlimited liability partnerships, and see how they behave then.
It does no such thing. It showed only that the politicians decided that it was more important to get a vaccine out quickly than ensuring that it was safe. For elderly and at risk people maybe that was the right call. Maybe not. But here we are and we are injecting kids with a vaccine that they don’t need. You might say that this is tangential, but it isn’t really as both stem from the hysteria over Covid.
If we wanted the ‘right’ amount of testing to be awarded, then pharmaceutical companies should bear significant liability. If the right amount of liability will hinder development too much then the State needs to shoulder the rest of it.
I don’t know whether you are saying that Corona vaccine should be included as a matter of their own logic, or you think that the two are equivalent. In any case, they aren’t equivalent since the Corona vaccine safety trials were rushed through.
Mr Ed : If a company is a person, it should sign its own contracts and explain its own position, and it needs no other people to be involved.
Does this principle also apply to three year old children ?
Limited liability is a one-way bet.
Well not if the contract is between two limited liability companies.
Tort, as you mention, is a different case. But you do not mention that in some real world legal systems, tort and mugging are not easily distinguished. So in a sense limited liability in tort may be seen as a different way of the state respecting property rights. The legal system refuses to protect you against mugging, but it limits the amount the muggers are allowed to carry away.
Let them all be like unlimited liability partnerships, and see how they behave then.
I’m afraid there are limited liability partnerships too. And there are businesses financed by loans preferentially secured on the assets, so that those who might win lawsuits against the business stand in line as unsecured creditors.
Can you imagine the trouble you’d have to go to to sue the shareholders of a big oil company for the damaging effects of an oil spill ? After a while ideolgical purity probably needs to give way to practicality.
Mr. Ed:
Sure, it’s a transparent legal fiction. But . . . absent Professional Limited Liability Partnerships, no two lawyers would ever combine into one efficient corporate structure. Absent LLC’s, no two or four people of means would ever combine into one corporate structure. Absent liability limitation for corporate structures, no company would ever grow into an entity bigger than one owner, because no one would buy ten shares of Ford Motor Company if they could be sued personally for the Pinto gas tank.
It is indeed a complete fiction – but it allows for growth that would otherwise never take place. I’d never put myself on the hook personally for any of the lawyers I combined with in my career – but with limited liability, I was able to combine with them and take advantage of cost-sharings that made my own work much ore profitable.
So long as the people with whom I deal know the arrangement going in, it is indeed a libertarian concept. (If the people with whom I deal are smart, they ask about insuring agreements and coverages, of course. Putting myself personally out of reach isn’t the same as making my customers go naked.)
@Mr Ed
I cannot think of a less libertarian thing than limiting liability in tort on the basis of the absurd fiction that a company is a ‘legal person’ with a distinct existence, when it is a vehicle for people to conduct business.
It isn’t a fiction at all. The status of each entity is a plainly known fact, and that is how the contracting participants will deal with each other. There is nothing fictional about it. Just because the word “person” means something else when unqualified by “legal” doesn’t mean that it is in any way deceptive or fictional, any more than “electronic mail” aka email, is deceptive because it doesn’t have a stamp from the post office on it.
And by contracting, I include all the broad category that falls under tort. If you don’t want your slip and fall claim to be shielded by limited liability, stay off the property that is controlled by such entities. If you think it is ridiculous that Mr. McDonald is not personally liable for the burns you sustained from the cup of coffee his staff served you, then don’t go through his drive thru.
As Bobby said, limited liability partnerships are the foundation for all modern wealth. Without them it would be impossible to get enough capital in place to build the things we want to build (impossible, that is, without getting the government involved, and god help us if the government is the only entity that can build big things.)
@bobby b
Sure, it’s a transparent legal fiction. But . . . absent Professional Limited Liability Partnerships, no two lawyers would ever combine into one efficient corporate structure.
FWIW, if my memory serves me correctly, it used to be that in Britain various professions, lawyers, accountants, architects (and maybe doctors before they all became government workers) were BANNED from using limited liability corporations, requiring instead to form partnerships with no liability protection. The idea being that they should stand by, and be fully responsible, for their professional decisions. I think the law on that is changed, and in lawsuit insane America that would never work. But just an interesting tidbit.
Any British lawyers/professionals who can comment on if my memory is correct?
In the US, they used to be forbidden to lawyers. I don’t know if there was an actual statute against lawyers limiting liability, but I do know that there was a Bar Rule forbidding it.
I went all through law school being told that such limitations were unprofessional, skeezy, and would bring us lawyers down to the level of accountants and sewage-pumpout-truck-drivers. Then, the year I graduated – ’92? – Minnesota passed a statute specifically establishing lawyer LLP’s, the Bar changed its tune, and every lawyer formed one.
(ETA: But, you were required to back up your expertise with malpractice insurance. If someone sued you and you had no insurance, you lost your license. So, you still had skin in the game – just not your house and your kids’ college accounts.)
Lee M
Which makes my point exactly, a child of that age is, in any jurisdiction I am aware of, temporarily incompetent in contract and doli incapax in criminal law, and before majority any contractual capacity is limited to necessities, and a child has to sue/be sued through a ‘litigation friend’, i.e. an adult, but is nonetheless potentially liable for torts to an unlimited degree if the necessary ingredients are found. And, all things being good, children age and acquire adulthood and capacity, which, strangely a limited company never does. Your point seems to be off point in the extreme.
So what, try suing in tort if an under-insured ‘limited liability’ company maims you, when the tortfeasor smiles and walks away with full pockets.
Fraser O:
Of course it is a legal fiction, the whole fiction that a company exists is pure make believe, and the rest follows from that. A company is nothing more than a document and an entry on a register. It is a device to make money (if any good) and to avoid losing it if bad. If a company exists, it will be sentient and will speak, think and act. This does not happen, it is just a collection of assets managed by individuals in their respective capacities. There is as much evidence for a company being a ‘person’ as there is for any god existing.
With regard to LLP, the situation was as you put it until in the end of the 1990s (IIRC), in 2000 the LLP was provided for in the UK. Of course, lawyers insured themselves before this, but insurers can be wrigglers. Lloyds of London was the classic unlimited liability partnership (in insurance) that went belly up, taking its ‘Names’ with it.
Mr Ed:
As your link to Lloyds shows it is in fact still flourishing; some of its syndicates failed as they have done on occasion since it was established. I seem to remember that there was some squealing from celebrity names who either were or professed themselves to be unaware that they were liable down to their last paper clip.
The debate as to whether a limited liability company is a legal fiction seems a bit sterile. Yes, it is a legal fiction that it is a person but it is a fact that the law gives it a legal status akin to that of a person.
I’d rather chase an insurer for repayment than a tortfeasor lawyer.
The opioid crises should have been a big eye opener.
Many thousands of people have died – died from highly additive drugs pushed by companies and a medical establishment who seem to thing “ethics” is a swear word. It is not just the drug maker that is to blame – it is the doctors who have just signed prescriptions, not giving a damn about their patients as human beings. This is the same sort of doctor who when told “do not engage in Early Treatment for Covid 19” just shrugs their shoulders and says to themselves “I can not buck the system – it would cost me my job” – sadly only a minority of doctors have shown moral conviction in the United States.
The vaccines may be wonderful, I do not know, but giving the drug makers legal immunity for harm they may do is clearly insane.
Sadly the drug makers and the medical establishment, in the United States and elsewhere, have already shown they can not be trusted.
NAL, but as I understand it you’re more or less correct. My father was a partner in a legal firm with unlimited liability for over thirty years. He was proud of it; to his mind, it promoted rectitude: if you’re personally liable for your mistakes, then you’re bloody careful not to make any.
I remember the first time he saw “LLP” after a firm’s name. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is it a partnership, or isn’t it?”
Quite apart from all the sophisticated legal history surrounding limited and unlimited liability, let me just say as a matter of principle that its insane that my government is trying to compel me to take a vaccine for which the manufacturer has been granted a blanket immunity. Makes me want to shout “Come and see the violence inherent in the system!”
Absolutely f*cking insane. And every single person who supports that is a straight-up unreconstructed totalitarian bastard, IMO.
@Mr Ed
Of course it is a legal fiction, the whole fiction that a company exists is pure make believe, and the rest follows from that. A company is nothing more than a document and an entry on a register.
So? By definition it clearly does then exist if it is a document and an entry on a legal register. Were you to win a million dollars on the lottery and you took the check to the bank, would you accept the argument “this check is just a piece of paper, an entry on a register, therefore you don’t have a million dollars”? Of course not.
If a company exists, it will be sentient and will speak, think and act.
A table is clearly a thing, but it isn’t sentient and doesn’t speak. I think the challenge here is that you are overestimating the meaning of the word “person” in the term “legal person. But that phrase has a specific legal meaning, nobody is suggesting that it is an actual sentient being. I suppose there is no need for it to be a legal “person”. The arrangements associated with dealings with companies can presumably be defined in a different way. If you want to argue that companies don’t have the same civil rights as an actual person, like freedom of speech, right to keep and bear arms, right to counsel or against self incrimination, I think that would be an interesting discussion. But arguing that a company is not a “person” in the sense that it is neither sentient nor verbal, is just a straw man.
And I object to the idea that you want to rob me of the freedom to agree with my customers that I will do business with them contingent on them agreeing that the company’s assets only are liable should something go wrong. If you want to do business in a different way, I have no objection.
When I formed my Limited company it was made explicitly clear to me that as a director I was personally responsible for malfeasance etc.
@Quentin
When I formed my Limited company it was made explicitly clear to me that as a director I was personally responsible for malfeasance etc.
INAL so don’t take my advice, but you most certainly are responsible. If your company under your direction commits a crime such as tax evasion or fraud, you can be held personally responsible for the crime. However, your personal assets are not (generally speaking) at risk if someone sues the company. It is just your financial liability that is limited not your criminal liability.
At a time when people are justly angry about arrogantly ignorant statism and political correctness (censoring free speech about vaccines, vaccine mandates, etc.), this anger can sometime spill over onto adjacent subjects, or at least be excessive towards them.
English law evolved to give corporations many of the attributes of legal persons because that was easier than creating a separate body of law de novo to cover them. It also had precedent:
If some government had instead created a new body of law at a stroke, it might well have been worse and paid less attention to freedom and more to state interest – potentially a high price to pay for avoiding a ‘legal fiction’. Many a legal fiction first appeared as a tax avoidance scheme. Legal fictions can indeed cause problems, but I’d rather focus in on fixing specific statism-enhancing problems than attack a concept root and branch, unless the whole area innately and unavoidably does so. (Well, yeah, I would say that, wouldn’t I – I’m a Burkean. 🙂 )
So, for example, I’d rather see YouTube obliged to stop silencing every vaccine-critical video than AstraZenica bankrupted by lawsuits for doing what many people undoubtedly wanted it to do – produce a vaccine fast – or else intimidated by fear of such suits from trying to.
Just my 0.02p on this thread.
“My product is wonderful – P.S. you can not sue me if it harms you”.
“This is normal” – well it should NOT be normal.
“The Covid vaccines will save the lives of vast numbers of children” – pull the other one, it has got bells on. Hardly any children are killed by Covid 19 – but some children may die from some of these medications.
If the product is a good one – then vaccine makers should not fear getting sued, and it most certainly should not be “normal” to give people immunity from being sued.
I am reminded of the Social Media companies (Youtube and the rest) “we need immunity from being sued so we can support Freedom of Speech” – then it turns out that the Silicon Valley companies are fanatically determined to DESTROY (not protect) Freedom of Speech. That Section 230 immunity did not work out very well – because the “Woke” Corporations did not uphold their part of the bargain (and no one punished them for not doing so).
I do not think that the Corporate idea (a bad idea though it may be – my position on that has changed over the years) has much to do with this – as even if it was an individual selling the vaccine they would still have this immunity from being sued for harm their product may do. And they should NOT have immunity from a jury in a court of law.
I remind people of the vast number of human lived lost due to the opioids pushed by the drug companies – they could not care less about how many people they kill.
And, yes, individuals (not just the companies) should be liable for the terrible harm they have done.
Hello Frank Luntz – this includes you, as you have been working pushing the lies of these depraved organisations for years.
That did not stop this “conservative” coming to the United Kingdom and giving us all the “benefit” of his supportive statements for the Football Association – with its endless Frankfurt School Marxist BLM “take a knee” stuff and rainbow flags.
Just stick to kicking a ball about – if I want to know about Marxism I will read the works of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and the rest. I do not need Association Football players (or their Corporate masters) instructing me in the finer points of Marxism.
As for the drug companies – and “we demand protection from being sued if our products kill anyone”, wonderful, “capitalists” like that do more to discredit capitalism than anything, other than the Credit Bubble fraudster banks (i.e. all the banks – and “financial centres”).
I agree that Tort Law is out of control in the United States – and getting that way here to. But then REFORM TORT LAW (so that people can insure against reasonable judgements – if their product is not too dangerous), do not give people blanket immunity from the Civil Law.
Explain to people the risks and benefits of the vaccines – and allow free debate. No more Silicon Valley totalitarianism.
And then let them MAKE UP THEIR OWN MINDS.
If the companies want immunity from being sued Tim Worstall, then ask each person to sign a legal disclaimer – and if they will not sign, then do not give them the vaccine.
Do not pretend, as the American government dishonestly does, that there are no risks with the vaccines.
And I am not “anti vax” – I am “double jabbed”.
@Paul Marks
If the product is a good one – then vaccine makers should not fear getting sued, and it most certainly should not be “normal” to give people immunity from being sued.
That might be true if the legal system were not in itself insane (in the US anyway.) Here people are sued for the most microscopic of offenses and receive astronomical judgements that mostly got to vile lawyers. Ask me how I know. Looking for lawsuit protection is a band aid on the bigger problem of the insane lawsuit and tort system in the USA.
Consider this: Airborne made a product that was basically Vitamin C in a tablet that dissolved giving a fizzy drink. They made claims about helping prevent colds and flu. They got sued for false advertising. The result? A $23million judgement against a small start up. About half the money went to the lawyers, the rest was divided up between consumers who, if they had a receipt, could get their money back for the product they bought, limit 2. So each consumer could maybe get $3 back, if they had their receipts for that
thing they bought three years ago.
It is a horrendous scam, that does nothing to help public health or consumers, but serves only to make scummy lawyers rich. That is why you need lawsuit protection whenever you can get it. Because it is a tool of bottom feeding lawyers to destroy you for no reason whatsoever.
I’m sensing a theme.
😉
@bobby b
I’m sensing a theme.
“vile lawyers” can tell us either that all lawyers are vile, or that we are referring to the subset of lawyers who happen to be vile.
I’ll allow you to determine which I mean 😀
I think you were a criminal defense lawyer, which people often thing of “lawyers who get criminals off on technicalities”, unless, that is, that they are the criminal defendant. And a divorce lawyer which people often think of as “the guy who helped me get what the bastard deserved”, or “the guy who stole everything I have worked for, and robbed me of my children.”
So, I guess what you think of a lawyer depends on your perspective. I have had many experiences with lawyers, and they have all been either angels or devils. Strangely, and coincidentally, which it was depended entirely if they were on my side or not. One thing they have in common though is that ALL those experiences were very expensive.
But surely we can all agree that PLs are all bottom feeders, even if they occasionally manage to dig up a truffle or two. (Forgive my very mixed metaphors…)
Fraser Orr – I agree that Tort law (and not just in the United States) is a mess.
It should, for example, be enough to get people to sign a legal disclaimer if they want to the vaccine. But I am told that in the United States, that still would not be enough to protect people from being sued, and unreasonably sued.
I certainly support INFORMED consent – people should have the arguments for and against the vaccines laid before them (no media and Social Media censorship) and then make a free choice.
And certainly no “vaccine passports” and threats to TAKE YOUR JOB AWAY if you do not accept the medication.
Pfizer has now hired 22 separate lobbying firms, all in Washington, DC, to craft drug policy in the United States.
Yes, that’s the accurate #. TWENTY TWO lobbying firms.
Plus Congressional staffers & fmr WH officials already recruited to push Pfizer’s agenda in DC.
Nothing to see here folks, move along now…………..