Break and said, hey guys, guess what?

You've got a chance.

He was my fraternity brother.

Do people, prosperous communities, have healthy environments?

Trust me.

She lived in Traficant for four years.

I really felt for a lot of reasons, I felt, but I didn't have the guts to spend money.

Papantonio is well known and accomplished as a trial lawyer.

He's a member of the Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame and an attorney who has successfully taken on powerful entities over the years and won.

His most recent legal success story was a major settlement involving opioids.

But in recent years, Papantonio has begun to make a name for himself as an author, writing a series of legal thrillers based on his own experience as a leading trial lawyer.

His most recent book is entitled The Middle Man.

We welcome Mike Papantonio to conversation.

So nice to have you back, my friend.

Thank you Jeff.

It's good to be back.

Take me back.

You're practicing law for years.

Huge amount of success.

And then you decide you're going to start writing books.

How did that come about?

Well, it's kind of a natural fit, because all I've done is taken all those years, and I've taken the cases like the opioid case or the human trafficking or the tobacco case or the first case.

And I've just I've said, these are such great stories on their own.

Right, without adding the fiction side to it.

So they kind of write themselves, you know, and, and so the publishers have always been really interested in the back stories of they get bits and pieces of the back story and maybe headline news, but these books go into the real details of it and they're good.

They're exciting stories, and at the same time you come away having to learn something.

Why do fiction versus nonfiction?

I think the fiction is something people are more interested in from the standpoint of people want to be entertained.

They every day they go home, they're watching the nightly news that sometimes a downer listen to the local radio sometimes.

So if they can just go and read a book that entertains them, and at the same time they come away and say, I didn't know anything about the pharmaceutical industry, I thought I knew everything about it.

And then a book like the The Middle Man, for example, will tell them something they've never even heard.

And so I think that's it's a better vehicle.

It has a longer shelf life.

People, the media, for example, they can tell a story like the middle man, the about the insulin case in the middle man.

It last 24 hours.

That story will be around for a long time, right?

You know.

Well, I know the book you wrote on, the opioid crisis, for example.

And I remember reading that.

And then as the news story started coming out, you know, you're like, wow, okay, I can relate.

And, you know, I learned a lot.

But at the same time, you kind of enjoy the characters in there and the different solutions.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the idea, Jeff, is to be able to sit on a beach and, read a chapter and come away the chapter, you've been entertained and you've you've learned something that you didn't know.

Right.

Most of these stories, the corporate media barely scratches the surface.

Right.

Right.

So the so the lead character here is Deke and has been through your legal thrillers.

So tell us a little bit about him.

What kind of guy?

Yeah, Deke is a composite.

I mean, if you start off with your characters have got to be composite.

And I always tell, I will say you can't.

You can't like your characters too much.

Because if you do, you do them damage.

You know, they're they can be noble, but they also have to have signs of ambition.

And they also have have signs of power seeking, whatever it is.

So I think sometimes a character like Deke, who is a lawyer, who has taken on the biggest cases in the country that nobody else will touch, is somebody that when you look at there's it's easy to have admiration for him.

But if I wasn't careful, I'd create a superhero that people, you know, they're turned off by that people.

People want to know that this person has a lot of dimensions.

They have barnacles.

They they have confusion about issues.

They're they're not that superhuman that sometimes a writer wants to create in their character.

I've tried to avoid that with these.

Tell me a little bit about obviously some of it.

I'm assuming it's probably based on you a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But who are some of the other folks that you kind of weaved into that character over the years?

I've had the chance to try really some of the biggest cases in the country.

And in those trials the last sometimes three months, I've had them last as long as three months.

And as you're as you're going through that trial, I'm always making myself notes.

Might be the defense lawyer and I'll pick up some characteristic.

The corporate defense lawyer that I said and all of that.

That's a nice quality.

Or maybe that's not such a nice quality.

And I'll make I'll make notes of them.

Over the years I've got tons of notes of character creations.

And so, it's a composite writing.

And you say at the end of it, let me, let me juggle it all up and see if I like this character in the deck character.

And really, all these characters are product of that same process.

Now, now clearly you kind of have a base to start with based on the case or whether it's opioids or, or whether it's like the story of the middle man, whatever the case may be.

But as you sit down, what's your thought process as you start developing the story?

Yeah, I'm I don't know whether you've ever had, James Lee Burke.

James Lee Burke is a tremendous fiction writer, but I mean, he's he's, he's a writer that has a belief that if you have a good story, you can you can, you can map it out.

You can do an outline.

But if you're not careful, that story that you're about to tell is going to be limited to that outline or that map.

So I've always bought into the idea you start off with a notion of the story.

Where does it begin?

Where does it end?

These stories are great in that I already know the ending, right?

Right.

I mean, they end with hopefully the case works out.

People or, you know, people are made whole and you get a bad product off the market.

You stop bad conduct by corporations.

So you know where it's going to land.

Kind of.

But I don't think you I don't think you approach it from beginning to end and say, this is how every chapter's going to play, going to play out, because sometimes you're writing and you'll have a dialog and all of a sudden in that dialog, you're saying, wow, I this story could easily shift this way.

And so James Lee Burke and, many writers that are out there say, don't get too close to your outline, you know, go ahead and understand.

Your story's got to breathe as you're writing it, and you'll see that all of these, you know, these these stories will take, take massive turns and you think you know where it's going to go.

And they don't go there.

And I like that kind of writing.

I like to keep the reader.

Well, you think it's going to a but it's going to be, you know, interesting.

Well tell me about the middle man.

Now, this is in the, in the series.

What what number we have.

That's number seven in series.

Okay.

Okay.

And that book is it's a story.

It's a, it's based on a story where, Brandon Bogle with our law firm filed a case against, the insulin manufacturers, and it was it was a case that was based on fraud in anti-trust.

Really, really bad conduct by the insulin manufacturers who were jacking up the price of insulin 2,500%.

Okay.

The way they were able to do it is through something they call a PBM.

Most people have never even heard what a PBM is, and it's amazing to me, people will read that book and I'll get emails and they'll say, I have never even heard of this before.

Thanks for, you know, shedding light on it.

But it's the PBM that is really the, vehicle that jacks up prices in this book, that where you take a will you take a product that costs cost $2 to make and they sell for, you know, $280 to people who are having to make a decision, can I take the insulin or can I eat tonight?

Can I take the insulin or can I pay my rent?

And so that's how desperate people are, but they don't understand why it's happened.

That book show, step by step how that happens.

It's based on a fictional character that's a mobster.

The equation I use in this book is the way the pharmaceutical industry works with PBMs in the United States is the closest thing that you would ever find to Rico mob activity.

I mean, that's a simple that's a simple story.

It is Rico mobster activity.

So I bring in this, I bring in a, an Irish mobster comes to the United States, looks around to say, wow, these pharmaceutical cases, these pharmaceutical companies are making a lot of money, and they're doing it without risk of going to jail.

They're not going to be arrested for what they do.

If I try to bring in marijuana or cocaine, the United States is a mobster.

I might get caught.

Right?

Well, if I get caught, I go to prison.

These these pharmaceutical mobsters, they can operate without ever having to worry.

Go to prison.

I can't even I literally can't even named for you in the last 15 years, we're a pharmaceutical case.

A pharmaceutical company has involved in just blatant anti-trust and fraud and basically stealing, literally stealing from American consumers where anybody's been arrested or gone to prison.

Tell me you mentioned PBM, but explain exactly what that is for.

It's a it's, if you can imagine that the pharmacy company makes a product, Pfizer might make a product.

Okay.

Before it gets to the pharmacy down here, there's this thing in the middle.

That's where the name middle man comes from.

There's this thing in the middle.

And you know what they do?

They decide which company gets to put their product in a pharmacy.

And whether or not that product will be paid for by insurance.

Now, think about that.

If you've got five companies making the same product, PBM is extorting those companies and they're saying, yeah, well, we'll, we'll let you sell your product and have insurance pay for it, but only if you give us kickbacks.

They there's no other way to put it.

What they receive from that pharmacy company, the manufacturer are kickbacks and they it's pay to play.

If you don't play us our kickback, we're not going to put you on the list of pharmaceuticals that get paid for by insurance.

So, so there's there's but but really, there's, all of them are working together.

It's a it's you do this for me, and I'll do this for you.

Look, can you imagine the first administration that's really paid any serious attention to this?

Is this administration?

No.

Up to now, nobody has even looked at PBMs and said, this is the big problem.

This is why pharmacy companies are saying are charging as high as 10,000% increase in the cost of a pill, 10,000%.

And so until we do away with the PBM, until, you know, until the administration says this is not right, Mom and Pop can't afford this, we're going to have this problem.

Right on.

How have they been able to get away with this for such a long period of time?

They spread money around, okay, there's a couple of reasons.

A the media won't do anything about it, because turn on your TV set and you're going to see an ad about a pharmaceutical every eight seconds.

All right.

They're bringing in billions.

The the corporate media is bringing billions of dollars in, in ad revenue.

So they're not going to do anything about this.

They're not going to talk about this.

You realize the first time a story was even done on this was after that book came out.

New York Times did a story.

You know what the title of the story was, The Middleman.

Okay.

And that's the first time they talked about PBMs in any serious kind of way.

So the so so regulators don't do anything about it because there's this evolving door between the pharmacy industry and the regulator.

Regulator day one is working for a PBM.

And or they may be working for a company.

Is a regulator and they're switching off.

They're going from regulatory to PBM or PBM to regulatory.

It's a it's a revolving door.

Revolving door.

So nothing happens there.

Nothing happens politically because you have senators and representatives with their hands out and they won't do anything about it.

And you don't have a Department of Justice that has every they have limitless, limitless tools to shut this down.

And nobody's done a thing about it.

So if if nothing happens, what where are you left with?

Corporate won't do it.

Media won't do it.

Regulators won't do it.

What happens?

The only thing you can do is take them to court and make a jury punish them for their conduct.

And that's what this book is about.

Who owns the PBMs?

The PBM is there's 300.

Oh, well, look, I feel like this 67 legitimate PBMs in the United States, just about 67.

Three of them control 90% of all the activity that happens between the pharmaceutical manufacture here in the pharmacy, three of them, they control those prices.

They make the deals on how much insulin costs.

They make a deal, across the board with how that pharmaceutical enters the chain of commerce to the pharmacy.

So they control virtually everything.

Why does the pharmaceutical manufacturer, the big, big pharma?

It seems to me when you have huge drugstore chains, I can understand if you have a bunch of little, but why wouldn't they just make a direct deal where they're.

It's because they're in it to okay, it's lateral growth.

Okay.

For example, now the PBMs are shutting that you're hearing about C. You're talking about these pharmacies shutting down all these CVS and all because the PBM now wants to go in and also own the pharmacy after they've controlled the price of the product to the pharmacy.

Now they're buying up the pharmacies.

They're trying to make them go away to where you never you never meet a pharmacist.

You want to do something.

You do it online.

You do by phone, right?

PBM with their lateral move, they now own the pharmacy.

That's the only source that you're going to have to get medication.

And there's going to be nothing that interrupts them.

Price gouging between the pharmacy pharmaceutical company that makes it and the pharmacy, that distributor.

What's the current administration you mentioned?

The current administration is the only administration in recent that's looked at.

What are they doing?

Well, first of all, they're firing some pretty ugly shots across the bow in which is get this under control or we will I have I've been doing this for 40 years.

Okay?

I have been preaching time and time again about if we don't control that, that thing called the pharmaceutical line, then we'll never going to control health care.

So right now you have the this administration said, wait, let me let me get this right.

This pill that you're selling sells for $2 in Europe.

It sells for $22 in the United States.

What's the difference?

You'll hear the pharmacy company say, oh, Will, is research and development, blah, blah, blah.

Insulin has been around for decades.

There's no research and development.

Right?

But nevertheless, it's increased 2,500% just in the last 15 years.

So there's no R&D at all.

It's just pure greed, absolute greed.

And this administration is saying get it under control.

Bobby Kennedy, for example, he's out front on it, get it under control.

We're going to do something about it.

And of course, in turn, if if the prices are high, the government's having to pay extra because of Medicare.

Exactly.

So don't they just say, Jeff, don't they say to the pharmacy company, you may not charge these people that money and be on any type of government association whatsoever.

If you're dealing with the government in any capacity, you may not charge.

And that's what they do all over the world.

They do it in Asia and Europe and even South America, third world countries.

Yeah.

Do this.

I was taking a deposition one time in Amsterdam, and I finished the deposition just for kicks.

I said, let me get this right.

What's this?

This pill?

It was a it was a birth control pill.

It was a yes.

I said this pill in United States, I forgot what the numbers were.

Cost $4.

But in your country, right here and right here in Amsterdam or Germany, it was a German company.

You charge, it costs something like $1.20.

And so there was no.

And I said, why is that?

He says, because we can get away with it.

We can literally.

That was his answer.

We can get away with it.

And that's the mentality of this pharmaceutical.

So the middleman, the middleman is a book that will give you the inside look on how this works.

And it's entertaining.

I think at this point it's it's virtually a five star book.

It's been out now month to month and a half to a couple months.

And, it's, it's it's a book that people are paying attention to.

And I hope that will continue to, to to bleed over into industry change.

And you've you've certainly had some positive reviews from some pretty major media publications and whatnot.

What's been the biggest surprise feedback you've gotten on it?

I think the biggest surprise is that sometimes you'll you'll write a book and they'll say, wow, I was really entertained by that.

And the thing you want to hear is I was entertained.

And I also learned a lot.

This book, more than any book I've written.

I hear that because if you were to like Jeff, if you line up ten people and you ask them what a PBM is, maybe two, we'll have any clue what I'm talking about.

So I guess the surprise is this has been a breakthrough in that they're getting it there.

You say, well, this is a great story.

It's very good story.

But at the same time you come away, you say, I've really I really learned something on that one.

Yeah.

How optimistic are you that things do get fixed?

Well, until you, until you purple people.

And this is what I've been saying for years, until you have some of these pharmacy companies that engage in every kind of misconduct.

Think of the opioid case.

You just think of the opioid crisis, right?

150 people died every day, okay?

The people in charge knew that it was killing people at 100, a rate of hundred and 50 people a day.

We saw the documents.

I had the documents right in front of me.

I took the depositions.

They clearly knew ten years before what was going to happen.

Now, the equivalent of that is what I call manslaughter, right?

If you if I say Jeff, I catch Jeff.

He's drinking a quart of of Jack Daniels and then driving 90 miles an hour through a school zone.

You know what that is?

It's a very least manslaughter when you run over a child.

At the very least, and possibly even second degree murder.

Not one of the CEOs for any of the pharmaceutical cases from any of the manufacturers, distributors, anybody.

Not one of them was, was even seriously investigated, much less perp walked.

But they created manslaughter.

It was manslaughter.

It was nothing less than manslaughter.

This in a sense is manslaughter.

When you get to the point in this book, when you understand some people can't even afford to buy insulin, that keeps them alive, the only way they can live is with insulin.

Right?

And these companies are making it virtually impossible for them to get that insulin.

Tell me about your I know you're working on another book.

Kind of close to your heart.

Tell me a little.

Yeah.

It's called it's called A Death in Arcadia.

It's very close.

I grew up in the in town Arcadia.

The book came out of, I was interviewing, Paris Hilton one time in a program that I do out in Las Vegas.

I have the chance to interview the remarkable people staying, Paris Hilton, you name it.

I've probably interviewed them in Las Vegas.

Mass sports?

Yeah.

It's a huge program that I've been doing for 26 years.

And so.

So I interviewed Paris Hilton, and she she said, Mike, and her story is that she was put in these institutions for different institutions where she was sexually assaulted in those institutions.

Okay.

And she said, would you do this story for me?

I mean, it was something where I said, I'm going to write this book.

And she said, great, would you do the story for me, too?

And her story was so compelling that in in 26 years doing this program, twice a year, I've had everybody from Al Pacino, McConaughey, you name them, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert.

Nobody has gotten two standing ovations, but she did.

Wow.

Because her story was so powerful.

And so I said, yeah, I'm going to do this book.

And I just based it on, loosely on some, some history.

Okay.

No, I think you like it.

Were you surprised that, I mean, you think of Paris Hilton, you think of somebody.

Everybody was shocked.

Celebrity.

Everybody was shocked.

But a wealthy celebrity.

Well, from a fame, by the way, that people don't realize this.

This she made every dime she made by herself.

This did not come from the Hilton family.

She built a powerhouse industry selling shoes and bags and perfume and billion dollar industry by the time she was 30 years old.

But when you hear her story about how she was sexually abused in four different reform schools because she was a problem child, no question about it, she'll admit, yeah, I was kind of a pain in the neck, right?

But that didn't that didn't mean I was going to.

I should be a that I should be abused.

Right.

So the story, the story of Death in Arcadia is based on loosely on that kind of story.

I think you'll like it.

I think I really think it's one of the best books I've written.

It'll be out, first and next year.

Okay.

So are you still kind of developing and putting in the final touch?

No, no, no, it's it's with the publisher right there.

Okay.

Right now they're they're doing the cover for it.

Okay.

All the panels and that kind of stuff.

But it's a very good book, Jeff.

I'll be shocked if you don't like it.

Okay?

Okay.

Well, what else are you working on?

Pass that.

So you are.

You have another one you're starting to do.

I, my, my daughter practices law with me.

I don't know if you know that or not, but she she does the same thing that I've done my entire career.

She's a spectacular trial lawyer.

I mean, every day.

I don't want to sound too much like a daddy.

So she is a spectacular trial lawyer, and she's working on one of the most important cases in the country right now.

It's a baby formula case where baby formula is killing preemie babies.

The preemie baby is born and they don't have the ability to digest cows milk or the formula that's being sold.

So they developed something called any C. And what any C is, is where the gastrointestinal system just shuts down it because ulcers, perforations, bacteria infections, inflammation kills the preemie baby.

And so that's been going on for a very long time.

And, you know, in the United States and around the world in some writing a book about this trial as it unfolds.

I don't know the ending on this one yet, so but, I know Sarah's working hard on this, so at some point, will Sarah come in and help you write them?

No, I keep her.

I kind of keep a distance from it.

Okay.

I try to, I sometimes I'll write, sometimes in all my books.

I'll say, Sarah, what do you think about this chapter?

And she'll say, you know, that that was a little heavy handed or whatever it might be.

I listen to her because she understands the practice of law as well as I do.

And so it's it's it's helpful.

You clearly you've been hugely successful as a trial lawyer.

So, so what's it like to watch your daughter come into the business?

Oh, it's just it's so rewarding because, I've tried to stand back and I've tried to see let it develop organically, but she came out of she came out of law school just on fire to be a trial lawyer.

And she's she's done exactly that.

And so that gives me it gives me it gives me, I'm pleased about the fact that she cares about people.

She cares about making sure that there's some justice in the way that corporations deal with people.

And that's that's important to her.

And once you have that heart that you're you line up on that side.

I guess she's watched me in courtrooms her entire life.

She'd travel with me and she'd watch a trial.

She said that I don't know what happened right there, but it was fun.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, I know I'm asking you in a very short period of time, but in 30s, if you just had to give me 2 or 3 things that really make a great trial lawyer, what would it be?

I think it means you have to have some anger in you.

You have to have anger that, about people treating people right.

If you can't get angry about that, if you can't get furious about people being mistreated by the powerful bullies, you can't get mad at that.

You're never going to be a great trial like Pappa Tonio, I would say he's probably one of the great ones in the, trial Lawyer Hall of Fame and making a name for himself these days as an novelist.

His latest is entitled The Middle Man, available where books are available.

Right?

Yep it is Mike.

Thanks again.

Thank you Jeff I appreciate you bet.

Wish you all the best.

By the way.

You can see many more of our conversations online at SRE.

Dot org.

Slash conversations were also available on the PBS video app and on YouTube.

Hope you enjoyed our program.

Thank you so very much for watching.

I'm Jeff Weeks take wonderful care of you, so we'll see you soon.