Originally published September 7 2005
Health South Corp. official gets prison sentence
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Health South Corp.'s finance chief was sentenced to three months in prison for the part he played in a $2.7 billion earnings overstatement.
A judge in Birmingham, Ala., sentenced HealthSouth Corp.'s first finance chief to three months in prison Thursday for his role in a $2.7 billion earnings overstatement at the rehabilitation and medical services chain.
Aaron Beam, who helped Richard Scrushy found the company in a one-room office in 1984 and testified against the ousted chief executive officer earlier this year in his fraud trial, also will forfeit $275,000 under a deal worked out with prosecutors.
California named 39 new defendants Thursday in its lawsuit against U.S. pharmaceutical companies accused of bilking California taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars by inflating drug prices.
The state initially sued Abbott Laboratories Inc. and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in 2003, accusing them of reporting false prices that California then used to set reimbursement rates for Medi-Cal, the state's version of the federal Medicaid program for low-income people.
U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon in New Orleans, who is overseeing federal litigation over the drug, Thursday set trial dates for Feb. 13, March 13 and April 3.
Fallon told lawyers to group their Vioxx claims, separating users who had heart attacks from those who suffered strokes.
A Texas state-court jury on Aug. 19 ordered Merck to pay $253 million to the family of Robert Ernst, who died at 59 after taking Vioxx for eight months.
Office Depot Inc., the world's second-largest office supplies retailer, named Restoration Hardware Inc.'s Patricia McKay as its chief financial officer.
Ripplewood Holdings LLC took out a full-page newspaper advertisement, saying it would still be interested in Maytag Corp. if the company's acquisition by Whirlpool Corp. isn't completed.
The ad appeared in Maytag's hometown newspaper, the Newton Daily News of Newton, Iowa.
The banks making the offers are JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., GE Commercial Finance and Deutsche Bank AG.
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