If you were sitting on information obtained through discovery of the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, what would you do?
Well, it's a no-brainer for Discovery Works Legal Inc's CEO, Harry Debari.
Glaxo's attorneys have just filed a suit against his company accusing them of "holding hostage over 20 terabytes of GSK's most sensitive and confidential data, and threatening to withhold and destroy the data unless GSK pays the ransom."
Debari has allegedly asked for $80,000 and unless GSK pay up its alleged that he will destroy almost 3.5 billion documents of litigation that his company have stockpiled over the years.
$80,000 seems a tad trivial for a ransom demand. I can only assume that Debari is asking GSK for money that they owe his company. If someone was in possession of potentially damaging documents then they could practically demand anything.
The apparent ransom demand stems from Glaxo learning of Discovery Works Legal Inc's financial situation, which looked pretty grim. Glaxo then asked for all the data held by Discovery Works Legal Inc to be cataloged and returned to them, Debari didn't comply and then, it's alleged, asked for $80,000.
If I were Debari I wouldn't destroy the documents, I'd simply post them on the internet. That would probably hurt Glaxo more than a complete deletion of records.
Full story at Law360 [Subscription only]
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