Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Blood on Their Hands
WORK NOTES: with Donna Shaw
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1955
WEBSITE:
CITY: New Brunswick
STATE: NJ
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.weinberglawfirm.com/about-us/attorney-eric-weinberg-personal-injury-lawyer-nj/ *
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1955.
EDUCATION:Attended Rutgers College and Boston University School of Law.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Attorney, The Weinberg Law Firm, New Brunswick, NJ; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, visiting lecturer.
MEMBER:Million Dollar Advocates Forum member, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America member, the New Jersey State Bar Association member, and the Middlesex County Bar Association member.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Eric Weinberg is an attorney and visiting lecturer at Rutgers University. Weinberg is a principal attorney of The Weinberg Law Firm, a New Brunswick, New Jersey-based law firm that handles personal injury, product liability, medical malpractice and related lawsuits. He lectures on injury claims and lawsuits. Weinberg attended college at Rutgers College and received his law degree from Boston University School of Law.
Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs, written with Donna Shaw, details the legal battle between the pharmaceutical industry and those representing hemophiliacs between 1980 and 1985. During this time, the majority of individuals in America suffering from severe hemophilia who were treated regularly with commercial clotting drugs contracted the AIDS virus.
The book relates personal accounts from patients who contracted the virus, including a nine-year-old boy. Though the case did not result in a guilty verdict of criminal conduct, it did lead to tighter product-safety regulations. Weinberg was a member of the legal team behind a 1994 class action negligence lawsuit and Shaw is an associate professor of journalism at the College of New Jersey.
A contributor to Publishers Weekly wrote: “The authors make a powerful and important case,” while Willis M. Buhle in Reviewer’s Bookwatch described the book as “an impressively informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking expose.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, June 26, 2017, review of Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs, p. 167.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, September, 2017, Willis M. Buhle, review of Blood on Their Hands.
ONLINE
Failure, http://failuremag.com/ (April 12, 2018), Jason Zasky, review of Blood on Their Hands.
ERIC WEINBERG is a practicing attorney in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He also serves as a visiting lecturer at Rutgers University and is a regular public speaker on the topic of injury claims and lawsuits.
ERIC H. WEINBERG, ESQ.
Eric Weinberg Eric Weinberg is the principal of The Weinberg Law Firm. Based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the firm handles a full range of personal injury, product liability, medical malpractice and related lawsuits in New Jersey, New York, and throughout the country.
A champion for the consumer and nationally known figure in mass tort litigations and other complex multi-party, multi-district products liability and negligence lawsuits, he has built a reputation for meticulous case preparation and aggressive prosecution of cases against large, powerful corporate defendants. He has earned the respect of his colleagues on both the plaintiff and defense sides of the bar for his professionalism and dedication to protecting the rights of his clients.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Talcum Powder Litigation
Our firm currently represents women who have suffered ovarian cancer that may be linked to the regular use of talcum powder for feminine hygiene.
Vaginal Mesh Products
Mr. Weinberg currently serves as local counsel for more than 500 vaginal mesh cases pending in New Jersey State court. Filed against vaginal mesh manufacturers C. R. Bard and Johnson & Johnson, these cases were consolidated in New Jersey Superior Court in Atlantic County, and recently moved to Bergen County. For information regarding local counsel services, please contact New Brunswick, NJ Lawyer, Eric H. Weinberg Weinberg at 877-934-6274.
Pradaxa
Mr. Weinberg represented plaintiffs in lawsuits against Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of Pradaxa, a blood thinning medication alleged to have caused internal bleeding and other injuries. Mr. Weinberg served as Co-Chair of the Science/Experts Committee and was member of the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in the Pradaxa consolidated multi-district litigation (MDL), reflecting his knowledge and experience in these types of complex actions. The Pradaxa MDL settled on May 28, 2014, for $650 million.
Medical Malpractice
Eric Weinberg assists individuals suffering catastrophic injuries occurring as a result of medical malpractice, including for example, the failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis of pulmonary embolism, volvulus and malrotation, and metabolic diseases; prescription drug errors; and failure to provide proper medical supervision.
Most recently, the firm received a combined verdict and settlement of $2.74 million from two doctors in a wrongful death case following an orthopedic surgery. The case was tried at the Middlesex County Court House in New Brunswick, NJ.
Food Poisoning Litigation
Mr. Weinberg has represented hundreds of individuals injured in multistate food poisoning outbreaks, including the ConAgra Peter Pan Peanut Butter, Veggie Booty Snacks, and Peanut Corporation of America outbreaks. He has also served as counsel for persons injured as a result of restaurant food poisoning outbreaks including Arby’s, Valdosta, Georgia; and Iberia Peninsula Newark, New Jersey.
Vioxx
Mr. Weinberg currently represents the State of Utah in a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Merck for the recovery of damages related to Vioxx expenditures. He previously represented the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in a similar case, which was settled by Merck.
Mr. Weinberg represented hundreds of individuals, or their survivors, who suffered serious personal injuries or died as a consequence of taking the prescription pain killer Vioxx. The firm filed over 300 cases against Merck, and recovered over $45 million on behalf of Vioxx personal injury victims.
Baycol
In 2003, Mr. Weinberg successfully negotiated settlements totaling $68.5 million for individuals who were injured by Baycol, a cholesterol lowering drug manufactured by Bayer. He also played a leading role in discovery and the area of expert development for this litigation, which was consolidated in Philadelphia.
Defective Blood Products
Mr. Weinberg was appointed to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in MDL-986, and served on the Executive Committee charged with management of the litigation on behalf of thousands of persons with hemophilia infected with HIV from the use of blood products. He was instrumental in obtaining a $670 million class action settlement with corporate defendants Baxter, Bayer, Rhone Poulenc, and Green Cross of Japan, on behalf of persons with hemophilia and HIV or their survivors. He represented individual clients in New Jersey and New York and negotiated additional settlements in excess of $30 million.
In connection with his representation of individuals with hemophilia and HIV, Mr. Weinberg participated in the organization, funding and direction of legislative strategies in New Jersey and New York that led to changes in the statutes of limitations in both jurisdictions, permitting injured persons to bring claims that might otherwise have been time-barred. Mr. Weinberg authored the law that is currently on the books in New York giving injured persons their rights to the court system.
Mr. Weinberg served as a Trustee of the Hemophilia Association of New Jersey. In 1995, the Association presented him with its President’s Award, given in recognition of extraordinary service to the hemophilia community.
Mediation
Mr. Weinberg’s knowledge of pharmaceutical litigation and his reputation for integrity led a global pharmaceutical company to retain his services as a mediator of dozens of product liability claims against the company. Mr. Weinberg successfully mediated a resolution of the matters. Mr. Weinberg is available to mediate complex litigation matters.
ADDITIONAL PERSONAL INJURY MATTERS – PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER NJ
In addition to the above matters, Mr. Weinberg has been responsible for numerous recoveries in negligence and product liability matters in state and federal courts, including the following:
$8,400,000 – Motor Vehicle Accident Resulting in Tetraplegia
$2,810,000 – Medical Malpractice – Pulmonary Embolism
$1,900,000 – Diving Accident Resulting in Quadriplegia
$1,740,000 – Pedestrian Motor Vehicle Accident
$1,600,000 – Diving Accident Resulting in Quadriplegia
$1,000,000 – Food Poisoning (Aggregate Settlement
$925,000 – Medical Malpractice
$750,000 – Construction Site Accident
$700,000 – Food Poisoning
$619,000 – Commercial Dispute
$550,000 – Defective Medical Device
$450,000 – Truck Accident Resulting in Quadriparesis
$350,000 – Fall at Commercial Construction Site
$300,000 – School Failure to Supervise
Although past results do not guarantee any particular future outcome, Mr. Weinberg’s experience makes him a formidable adversary to defendants.
Lectures and Teaching
Eric Weinberg is a noted speaker and lecturer on topics relating to the prosecution and settlement of serious injury cases, including mass tort and catastrophic injury cases. He has served as a Visiting Lecturer at Rutgers University, where he taught a Senior Honors Colloquium entitled, “AIDS, Blood and Litigation.” He has been an invited speaker for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education and the Defense Research Institute, seminars conducted by Mealey’s Litigation Reports, and the educational seminar “Mass Torts Made Perfect.”
Education
Eric Weinberg is a graduate of Rutgers College and Boston University School of Law. He is admitted to the Bars of the States of New Jersey and New York, as well as numerous Federal courts.
Additional Information
Mr. Weinberg is a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the New Jersey State Bar Association, and the Middlesex County Bar Association.
Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs
Publishers Weekly. 264.26 (June 26, 2017): p167.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs
Eric Weinberg and Donna Shaw. Rutgers Univ., $34.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8135-7622-0
This insider account from Weinberg, an attorney and visiting lecturer at Rutgers, and Shaw, associate professor of journalism at the College of New Jersey, chronicles the legal battle fought on behalf of hemophiliacs against a pharmaceutical industry that failed to protect them from the potential for contracting hepatitis and AIDS through their blood-clotting medicines. "Most people with severe hemophilia who regularly infused commercial clotting drugs between 1980 and 1985 contracted the AIDS virus," the authors write. "Few involved in the devastation were willing to accept responsibility." Weinberg, a member of the legal team behind a 1994 class action negligence lawsuit, lends astounding detail to the suffering of unwitting patients--including a nine-year-old boy--and their frustrating fight for justice. There was never a finding of criminal conduct in the case, though the legal action resulted in tighter product-safety regulations that limited further infections. The narrative can be as complicated and dense as the case it describes, and though the book's pace suffers for it, the authors make a powerful and important case by unveiling the suffering that devastated families know "could have been entirely prevented." Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs." Publishers Weekly, 26 June 2017, p. 167. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497444416/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c2612fef. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497444416
Blood on Their Hands
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer's Bookwatch. (Sept. 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Blood on Their Hands
Eric Weinberg & Donna Shaw
Rutgers University Press
106 Somerset St., 3rd Floor, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
9780813576220, $34.95, HC, 304pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: A few short years after HIV first entered the world blood supply in the late 1970s and early 1980s, over half the hemophiliacs in the United States were infected with the virus. But this was far more than just an unforeseeable public health disaster. Negligent doctors, government regulators, and Big Pharma all had a hand in this devastating epidemic.
The collaborative work of Eric Weinberg (a practicing attorney in New Brunswick, New Jersey) and Donna Shaw (Associate Professor of Journalism, and the Chair of the Journalism and Professional Writing program at The College of New Jersey in Ewing Township), "Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs" is an inspiring, firsthand account of the legal battles fought on behalf of hemophiliacs who were unwittingly infected with tainted blood.
As part of the team behind the key class action litigation filed by the infected, Eric Weinberg was faced with a daunting task: to prove the negligence of a powerful, well-connected global industry worth billions. Now Eric Weinberg and Donna Shaw tell the dramatic story of how idealistic attorneys and their heroic, mortally-ill clients fought to achieve justice and prevent further infections.
Critique: An impressively informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking expose of one of the American medical system's most shameful debacles in living memory, "Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs" is a vivid example that through perseverance and the American justice systems, the victims of pharmaceutical corporate greed, corrupt or incompetent politicians, uninformed and negligent physicians can achieve deserved recompense for themselves and those they love. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented study that also includes twelve pages of Notes and a ten page Index, "Blood on Their Hands" is an especially recommended addition to both community and academic library collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "Blood on Their Hands" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $33.20).
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Buhle, Willis M. "Blood on Their Hands." Reviewer's Bookwatch, Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A511455016/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=273349c4. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A511455016
Blood on Their Hands
How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs.
Jason ZaskyApr 12, 2018
Blood On Their Hands Book Cover
Just a few years after HIV entered the world blood supply over half of the hemophiliacs in the U.S. were infected with HIV, not to mention other dangerous viruses like hepatitis B and hepatitis C. The story of how and why this happened is recounted in “Blood on Their Hands: How Greedy Companies, Inept Bureaucracy, and Bad Science Killed Thousands of Hemophiliacs” (Rutgers University Press), a first-hand account of the legal battles fought on behalf of the hemophiliacs who were sickened by tainted clotting products.
It’s a riveting story, expertly told by Eric Weinberg—a New Jersey attorney who worked tirelessly for years on end on behalf of victims—and co-author Donna Shaw, a professor of journalism and the chair of the Journalism and Professional Writing program at The College of New Jersey. It’s also a hair-raising story, because what unfolded was anything but unforeseeable.
As Eric Weinberg notes in the following Failure interview, clotting medicines like Factor VIII and Factor IX transformed the lives of hemophiliacs beginning in the last 1960s and ’70s, allowing them to live relatively normal lives. (Hemophilia is a bleeding disorder in which the blood doesn’t clot normally. As a result, people with hemophilia bleed for a longer time than others after injury, and may also bleed internally, especially in the knees, ankles and elbows.) The advent of freeze-dried blood-clotting concentrates—made from human plasma and sold in glass vials along with sterile saline and syringes—allowed patients to self-administer the medicines, whenever and wherever they needed treatment.
Yet the process of manufacturing medicines like Factor VIII involved collecting plasma at commercial plasma centers, which were often located in prisons, low-income communities and skid row neighborhoods. As such, they attracted donors who were more likely than most to be infected with dangerous viruses. Worse yet, once collected, big shipments of the frozen plasma would be taken to a processing facility, where thousands of units at a time would be dumped into enormous vats. This saved on manufacturing costs but meant that patients who took “the factor” were exposed to a high risk of contracting hepatitis and HIV.
As we now know, Big Pharma, government regulators and many doctors were aware of the potential dangers, especially after patients began falling ill. Manufacturers could have rendered the medicines germ-free, yet “until a foreign competitor began heat-treating its hemophilia medicines to kill viruses, none of the major fractionators that purchased plasma from prisoners or other high-risk sellers followed suit,” note Weinberg and Shaw in the book.
In the course of the interview below, Weinberg discusses the process that was used to collect and process the plasma, the legal challenges faced in trying to get justice for the victims, how the litigation was resolved, and whether he views the outcome of the cases as a success or failure.
The book opens with a vignette from Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Tell me about where companies were getting their supplies of plasma in the 1970s and ’80s.
The manufacturers—which included Baxter, Bayer and Rhone-Poulenc—would collect plasma from paid donors. People would come in, they would be hooked up to the collection machines, the whole blood was taken from them, then the plasma would be fractionated out and the red blood cells returned to the body. Since this was the method of collection, it would permit donors—who were paid five, ten or fifteen bucks—to return more than once a week. So vast amounts of the human plasma were collected from paid donors in prisons and urban areas, and these were the sources of most of the human plasma used to produce the products.
There was some controversy about the source of the plasma, and buying the plasma was not a great idea. That was the position taken by some pretty responsible people in the medical and scientific community, because when you are purchasing plasma from folks—they used the word donors but they were paid—those people need money. They are usually not working and have other issues, and in the prisons there were high incidences of hepatitis. In the private community—same thing—you had people who had already been infected with transmissible blood borne viruses. So using paid donors was controversial because there were concerns about the rates of infected or tainted plasma. Going back to the seventies the concern was not HIV, which was not known yet, it was hepatitis B and a newly discovered strain of hepatitis initially called Non-A, Non-B, which later became known as hepatitis C.
Part of what we argued as a duty of care on the companies was to find ways to sterilize the plasma collected from paid donors. To be clear, when companies like Baxter and Bayer would collect this plasma they would either have their own centers or have contracts with companies that ran these plasma centers. The plasma would be collected from donors and it would be frozen and shipped to the manufacturers’ plants, which were located mainly in the U.S. When shipments arrived they would be fractionated and the clotting factor—Factor VIII or Factor IX—would be dumped into vats—big, gleaming metal vats.
So when the plasma products were produced and packaged and put into vials that could be mixed with saline and drawn into needles and infused in the body, the plasma came from thousands or tens of thousands of paid plasma donors. The relevance of that to the litigation was, when you’re exposing someone who is a hemophiliac to the plasma of literally thousands of paid donors, you’re increasing the risk that there will be infectious viruses in the product because the more donors the more risk.
Of course, the endgame that brought us into the litigation was that the rate of infection in the hemophilia community was very high. As a result of the way the product was manufactured, most of the community that was using these products on a regular basis got infected with viruses, including HIV.
The process of pooling the plasma sounds egregious. Did the companies have an understanding of what they were exposing people to?
That was an issue in the case. They did have an understanding; the feeling expressed by the companies was that the benefit of the product outweighed the risk. That is, the benefit of the clotting factor product—the way it affected and impacted people’s lives was substantial. It enabled them to travel and move around and not have to go to the doctor’s office or the hospital. They could infuse themselves or could be infused by family members.
But it also increased the risk of infection and ultimately our contention was that the risk, which was known to the companies, outweighed the benefits, particularly since the sterilization of fractions of plasma had been developed back in the 1940s and ’50s when plasma products were used on soldiers and there were outbreaks of jaundice. [That is], scientists were hired by the companies to develop methods of sterilization, methods that were very successful. Our position was that that could have been done for these clotting factor products as well.
The reason it wasn’t done, I believe, is that Factor VIII and Factor IX are heat sensitive enzymes and if the enzymes are not stabilized they can be destroyed by heat very easily. But our contention was that those processes were available and discoverable and developable and they could be scaled up—and should have, given the risk.
Our argument was that infectious diseases in products made from human plasma hold the risk of transmitting new, previously undiscovered viruses. The story of hepatitis C was a baseline story for us because that was an example of a virus not previously recognized that was recognized by the mid-1970s or so to be in the plasma. That confirmed the risk that new viruses can appear, therefore sterilization is essential for the protection of the patients.
Hemophiliacs didn’t understand the dangers they were being exposed to, right?
Well, every person with hemophilia has a different understanding; everybody comes to the table with their own mindset. I don’t think it’s fair to say they didn’t have an understanding. Having worked closely with folks in the community, I believe they accepted the position of the companies that the benefits of the product outweighed the risks. But our argument was that that was an incorrect assumption and the proof of that is what happened, because HIV infection was devastating.
Tell me about some of the challenges faced in getting justice for the victims.
When I got into the cases back in the early nineties a number had been tried to verdict. All but one had been defense verdicts and the one plaintiff’s verdict had been reversed. So it was difficult to prove risk, it was difficult to prove knowledge; it was difficult to prove the availability of methods to inactivate or sterilize—to basically remove the viral contaminants. And the arguments about benefit and risk were compelling. Those were defenses that were raised very effectively by companies and the lawyers who represented them. These were very difficult cases to win. Our job was not easy.
And the statute of limitations was an issue as well?
The statute of limitations was a defense because most people with hemophilia were infected beginning in 1978, ’79, ’80, ’81, ’82. The infections with HIV continued into ’83, ’84, ’85. But a lot of time passed between when the infections occurred and when people came forward with their claims.
The statute of limitations varies state by state but is basically calculated from when someone is aware they have been injured due to the potential negligence or improper conduct of another, and it’s a year up to sometimes three or four years. But those periods of time had passed.
In our cases, which were in New Jersey and New York, we recognized this was a major problem. So we were motivated to develop a strategy to get the laws changed—to extend the statutes of limitations for these people, who were innocent people. They didn’t delay filing lawsuits because they didn’t care or because they thought the law didn’t apply to them. They didn’t file cases because having HIV was humiliating and it was a difficult decision to make.
Ultimately, one of the things that we did that I was very pleased about was to develop community-based efforts to persuade legislators in New Jersey and New York to extend the time within which people with hemophilia could bring their claims. And we were successful. Christy Whitman in New Jersey and George Pataki in New York signed these bills into law. I don’t think there were any other states in which the statutes of limitations were extended by statute. So it was a problem.
But we were able to survive statute of limitations challenges in many cases because of changes in the law, or based on arguments that statutes of limitation for children under the age of 18 typically don’t begin to run until they reach the age of majority.
Then there were some cases that survived because the arguments were made that “I didn’t know that there was a failure on the part of the companies,” so the statute couldn’t have begun to run when I was infected. And those arguments were successful. But it was a tough issue for the plaintiffs, for sure.
How was the litigation resolved?
We started in 1991; the litigation started a few years before that. We got a lot of people coming in the door in the community and we filed individual cases. Then in 1993 a number of lawyers filed for Multidistrict Litigation and class action litigation. Multidistrict Litigation is a statutory setup that’s the consolidated litigation of a large number of claims with similar background. If the panel of senior federal judges deems the matter appropriate for Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) handling, the motions are granted and the matter is assigned to a single federal judge. In our case it was Judge John F. Grady in Chicago, in the northern district of Illinois.
All of the cases that had been filed in federal court were then transferred to that court for management. And that judge would then appoint steering committees—on both sides—of lawyers who had experience and knowledge. I was appointed to that committee by Judge Grady. We also had individual cases in New Jersey and New York that were in state court so they were not transferred to the MDL.
Basically what happened was that the companies made offers of settlement in 1996 that resolved most of the claims. The damage was $100,000 per victim, which some of us thought was a low number, but again, the risks of litigation were substantial. So it was accepted by most. Then a number of folks who had filed their individual cases rejected the offer and had their cases proceed individually. Ultimately those cases were also resolved and the settlements were, in our cases, higher than $100,000. The settlements were confidential but we were pleased with those results. It all came to an end in the early 2000s.
What should we learn from this?
The lesson is that when products are made in the health industry, whether they are biologic products, blood products, pharmaceutical drugs or other kinds of products, there’s always going to be a balance of benefit-risk assessment. Always. It’s part of the basic format of drugs being approved in the United States. So make sure you understand the risk and benefit. And where there is a risk—and the risk can be eliminated or substantially reduced—the duty of care requires that that be done.
With some time to reflect, do you view the legal resolutions as a success or failure?
I think that getting recovery for everyone was a success. I think that most of the people in the community who received settlements were satisfied, even if the numbers were in some instances lower than we thought or hoped to recover for the group. It took a lot of time and the sadness of this was that a lot of victims died from the diseases that they got from the products.
Was it a success or failure? That’s a very good question and I think the answer is it was both. I think the products are better; the companies have done better and I think they learned. I got to meet folks on the company side and a lot of the lawyers representing them. They weren’t bad people but lessons did need to be learned.