Mr. Bonaccorsi joined Akorn, Inc. in May 2009 from Walgreen Co., where he served as Senior Vice President Mergers & Acquisitions and Counsel for the Walgreens-Option Care Home Care division. Mr. Bonaccorsi joined Option Care, Inc in 2002, where he served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary and Corporate Compliance Officer through 2007, when Walgreen Co. acquired Option Care, Inc. Prior to joining Option Care, Inc., Mr. Bonaccorsi practiced law in Chicago, where he focused his practice in the area of civil litigation. He was a capital partner at the law firm Sanchez & Daniels and an associate attorney at the law firm Fraterrigo, Best & Beranek. He received his B.S. degree from Northwestern University and his J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

 

B.S., Biology, Cornell University, 1988; J.D., Hofstra University School of Law, 1992. A partner in the firm’s chemical/biotech practice group, Mr. Brew represents both corporations and educational institutions in securing protection of their intellectual property. He is a member of the American Bar Association, New York Bar Association and New York Intellectual Property Law Association. He is experienced in all phases of patent prosecution and litigation, as well as trademarks, unfair competition and trade secrets. He is also experienced in due diligence, licensing, and providing opinions regarding freedom to operate issues. Fields of technology include pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, biotechnology, immunology, vaccines, medical devices, agrochemicals, cosmetic formulations, foods, paper processing, organic chemistry, adhesives, electrophotography, and polymers.

 

Eve Costopoulos is Vice President, Corporate Ethics and Compliance/Internal Audit for Eisai Inc. She is responsible for managing the Company’s commercial and R&D compliance programs and Internal Audit activities. 

Prior to joining Eisai in February 2010, Ms. Costopoulos was employed at Schering-Plough Corporation, where she managed the activities of the company’s global compliance officers.  While there she implemented and managed the company’s compliance training activities, global privacy program, integrity action line and compliance-related investigations, and compliance-related board support. 

Previous to her work in Compliance, Ms. Costopoulos worked as an attorney, most recently with the Schering-Plough legal department, and prior to that, in private law practice.   

Ms. Costopoulos is a member of the Pharmaceutical Compliance Forum (PCF).  In 2006, she was a recipient of the Executive Women of New Jersey Salute to the Policy Makers Award, and in 2008 she was nominated as a TWIN Honoree by the YWCA of Central New Jersey.  She has served as a Trustee of the Arts Council of the Morris Area for nine years. 

Ms. Costopoulos holds a BA from Rutgers College and a JD from Seton Hall University School of Law. 

 

Alina Denis Jarjour served as General Counsel, Secretary & Chief Compliance Officer of EKR Therapeutics from 2010 until 2011. Previously, she was Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of Medarex, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

During the last two decades, Ms. Jarjour has worked with highly regulated companies and been responsible for: advising on and negotiating commercial deals, managing corporate legal departments, overseeing governance, providing day-to-day corporate counsel and spearheading company-wide compliance programs.

Ms. Jarjour speaks frequently on commercial, legal, regulatory and corporate compliance topics affecting the life sciences and health care industries.

Ms. Jarjour received her JD degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is Fluent in Spanish and serves on the board of Family Service Association of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

 

Bill is an IP attorney and litigator with fifteen year’s experience.  At Cubist, Bill works on IP procurement and enforcement, deals as both lead attorney and for IP diligence, and disputes in a variety of areas.  Bill was up until recently heavily involved in a Paragraph IV litigation involving the company’s product Cubicin® and was the lead attorney on a co-promotion agreement and a public company acquisition.  Bill came to Cubist in 2003 from a large Boston law firm where he managed patent disputes and counseled clients seeking advice with intellectual property issues.  Bill is a volunteer mediator in the Dedham District Courts, chairs the Boston Patent Law Association In-house Practice Committee, belongs to the Boston IP American Inn of Court, serves on the ACC Litigation Committee and is a registered patent attorney. Bill is a graduate of Boston University School of Law and holds a degree in biochemistry from Columbia University.

 

Gretchen Fritz is the Assistant General Counsel for Commercial Brands at Daiichi Sankyo, Inc.   Gretchen counsels on healthcare laws and regulations, OIG and PhRMA guidances, and commercial and government contracting and reimbursement.  At Daiichi Sankyo, she has supported all major departments on the commercial side, including within a number of co-development and co-promotion relationships.  Gretchen regularly speaks at pharmaceutical and legal conferences on issues including off-label communications, social media, and physician consultant relationships.  Gretchen graduated from University of Pennsylvania Law School.  She was an associate at Winston & Strawn and Hogan & Lovells (then Hogan & Hartson).

 

Andrew has over fourteen years of experience actively managing and supervising large, complex document reviews on antitrust, securities, commercial litigation, intellectual property and construction law matters in industries such as telecommunications, financial services, pharmaceuticals, oil/gas, healthcare, consumer products and semiconductors. He has trained multiple large teams on document review, creating privilege logs, and deposition digesting and is currently responsible for spearheading QuisLex’s litigation training programs.

He also manages key substantive and administrative aspects of QuisLex’s client and vendor relationships. Andrew began his career in the LPO industry with QuisLex's subsidiary, SQ Global Solutions. Andrew received his J.D. and M.B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and earned a B.A. with honors from the University of Michigan.

 

Reza Green is Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at Novo Nordisk Inc., the US affiliate of Novo Nordisk A/S, where she supervises a group of patent attorneys in all aspects of IP law, including, e.g., patent and trademark prosecution, litigation, and licensing.  She received her J.D. from Fordham Law School and practiced at Darby & Darby before joining Novo Nordisk.  Prior to entering law, she received a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from NYU School of Medicine and engaged in research and teaching as a member of the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.  Novo Nordisk is a global pharmaceutical/biotech company that is a leader in diabetes care, hemostasis, and other therapeutic areas, employing approximately 25,000 people in 79 countries.

 

Partner
Peg Donahue Hall is both a member of SNR Denton's Litigation practice and one of the firm leaders of the Health and Life Sciences industry sector, with experience representing clients in a wide range of litigation matters, including pharmaceutical, commercial, labor and employment and intellectual property.

Peg is also a member of SNR Denton’s National Recruiting committee, which is charged with entry level hiring for the firm’s offices across the country. She is a member of the Women's Business Development Group at SNR Denton. Peg has been named a "Best Lawyer in Dallas" by D Magazine in 2011.

Representative Experience

• Peg has extensive experience representing pharmaceutical manufacturers in high-stakes disputes involving the safety and efficacy of their products.
• She handles cases in state and federal courts, and serves as national counsel defending mass claims in multidistrict proceedings.
• Her work often requires the identification and mastery of complex scientific, medical and procedural issues.
• Peg also represents pharmaceutical manufacturers in pricing litigation initiated by federal, state, and local government entities across the country.
• Peg represents business clients in pre-dispute resolution, arbitration and federal and state court proceedings with claims involving contracts, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, business torts, false advertising and other commercial law issues.
• Peg represents and advises employers in matters involving federal and state employment statutes and state law tort claims and handles employment litigation for clients in a wide variety of industries.
• Peg advises clients in matters involving trademarks, trade secrets, nondisclosure and non-competition agreements.
• She has represented businesses engaged in disputes regarding software development, ownership, implementation and licensing.

 

Jerome D. Jabbour is Senior Vice President, Head of Global Legal Affairs for Wockhardt Limited, a global biotechnology and pharmaceutical company having its headquarters in Mumbai, India, with subsidiaries in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and France, along with active business interests in Russia and South America.  Mr. Jabbour has global responsibility for all legal matters for Wockhardt, including corporate transactions, regulatory, commercial compliance, employment matters, intellectual property and litigation.  Immediately prior to Wockhardt, he was counsel to Reliant Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company located in Bedminster, NJ where he was part of the core team that acquired and launched Lovaza®.  While at Reliant, Mr. Jabbour focused on corporate, regulatory and litigation matters, with emphasis on product acquisitions and divestitures.  Mr. Jabbour was a key contributor to Reliant’s sale to GlaxoSmithKline in 2007. Mr. Jabbour began his legal career as a member of the corporate department at Lowenstein Sandler PC in Roseland, NJ.  Mr. Jabbour received his J.D. from Seton Hall University School of Law, where he was a member of the Seton Hall Law Review, and received a B.A. from Loyola University – Maryland.

 

Gil M. Labrucherie is Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Nektar Therapeutics (Nasdaq: NKTR).  He has been with Nektar for over 6 years responsible for all legal matters including corporate governance, SEC reporting, corporate compliance, regulatory, intellectual property, corporate alliances and litigation.  Prior to Nektar, Mr. Labrucherie was Vice President of Corporate Development at E2open, Inc., a software service provider, where he was responsible for global corporate alliances and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to E2open, he was the Senior Director of Corporate Development at AltaVista Company, an Internet search company, where he was responsible for mergers and acquisitions.  Mr. Labrucherie began his legal career in the corporate practice of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California.  Mr. Labrucherie received his J.D. from the University of California Boalt Hall School of Law, where he was a member of the California Law Review and Order of the Coif, and received his B.A. from the University of California, Davis.

 

Chan Lee is Chief Counsel for the Oncology Business Unit.  Chan began his career at Pfizer in 2001 and has worked on a wide range of commercial, regulatory, transactional and IP-related legal issues.

As an attorney in U.S. Pharmaceuticals Legal, Chan provided legal counseling on a number of products, including Geodon, Genotropin, Somavert, Detrol LA and Rebif.  In 2005, Chan joined Worldwide Business Transactions Legal where he helped complete three transactions.  Most recently, Chan has been leading a group providing legal support to our Japan/Asia region. 

Prior to joining Pfizer, Chan was a transactional attorney at Merck. He graduated from University of California, Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall) in 1994 and clerked for Chancellor William Allen at the Delaware Chancery Court.  Chan received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University.

 

Lara joined Abbott in 2000 as Counsel in the Litigation Department.  In 2003, she was promoted to Senior Counsel and in 2005, Division Counsel.  While in Litigation she handled, among other matters, the sevoflurane arbitration with Baxter preventing Baxter from launching a generic sevo for over two years and obtained three preliminary injunctions against generic companies attempting to launch generic clarithromycin products.  In 2006, she moved into commercial legal and supervised the lawyers supporting Abbott Nutrition. She became DVP & Associate General Counsel, International Legal Operations, in December 2007 where she developed and led Abbott’s cohesive international legal group.  In 2009, she became DVP & Associate General Counsel, Commercial Legal Operations, where she led the commercial legal support for Abbott Nutrition, Abbott Diagnostics, Abbott Molecular, Abbott Point of Care, Abbott Diabetes Care, and Animal Health.  In 2010, she became DVP & Associate General Counsel, Pharmaceutical Products Legal Operations, leading the attorneys providing commercial legal support for all of the proprietary PPG areas (PPD, GPO, GPRD, GSMS), including providing legal support for the licensing new pharmaceutical products, as well as the corporate functions.

Prior to joining Abbott, she was a law clerk in the Northern District of Illinois for the Hon. David H. Coar, and later an attorney at the law firm of McDermott Will and Emery. Lara earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota.  She earned her Juris Doctorate from New York University School of Law.

 

Speaker bio coming soon...

 

Maria E. Pasquale is the Senior Vice President Legal & Chief Counsel at Celgene Corporation, a global bio-pharmaceutical company in Summit, New Jersey and has been with Celgene since 2001.  Ms. Pasquale is responsible for the global management of the legal department and corporate legal affairs including transactional matters, regulatory, commercial compliance, R&D agreements, intellectual property, and litigation for Celgene.  Maria has led the legal department through its global expansion from a domestic company to having offices in over 40 countries around the world, as well as, through the acquisitions of Anthrogenesis in 2002, Pharmion in early 2008 Gloucester Pharmaceuticals in 2009 and most recently Abraxis Biosciences in 2010.

Prior to joining Celgene, Ms. Pasquale was at Pennie & Edmonds LLP in New York (now a part of Jones Day, LLP) for over ten years, specializing in litigation in the biotechnical and pharmaceutical field; legal strategies for product life cycle management, due diligence, domestic and foreign research collaborations.

Maria has a Bachelors of Science degree in Biochemistry and prior to law school spent five years doing scientific research in cancer and the study of genetic diseases at the Institute for Basic Research, New York, NY and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Nassau, NY.  She is a co-author on several scientific publications.

Maria is admitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of New York and the District of New Jersey; the Bars of the States of New York and New Jersey as well as Bar of the United States Patent & Trademark Office.  Maria has over 20 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience.

 

Seth Rodner has a unique combination of government, private practice, and business experience, having served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in international cartel enforcement; a business crimes litigation partner in a prominent Florida law firm, where his nationwide practice defended a wide range of white collar investigations and agency proceedings across multiple highly-regulated industries including healthcare and life sciences; and currently Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary for Medicis Pharmaceutical Corporation, an NYSE-listed pharmaceutical, biologics, and medical device company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.

As Medicis General Counsel, Mr. Rodner directs the worldwide legal affairs of the corporation, including its prescription dermatology, facial aesthetics, ultrasound body contouring, and urea cycle disorder divisions. His mandate spans all dimensions of the business, ranging from corporate governance, securities disclosure, and FDA regulatory and other government healthcare program guidance to transactions, investigations, litigation, contracting, employment, and intellectual property matters.

Before his appointment as Medicis General Counsel in 2010, Mr. Rodner served as the Company’s Senior Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer since being recruited to the organization in 2006. In this capacity, Mr. Rodner created, built, and ran Medicis’s comprehensive compliance program; led the negotiation, implementation, and administration of its Corporate Integrity Agreement; and positioned the Company as an industry leader in driving consistent compliance standards into specialty pharmaceuticals and aesthetic medicine.

A frequent author and speaker on government enforcement and corporate compliance, Mr. Rodner is the past-Chair of the Federal Bar Association’s national Criminal Law Section, and has been named in multiple publications as a rising star in the legal profession. His pro bono efforts include prior service as Director of the New England Innocence Project, coordinating a six-state initiative utilizing DNA evidence to exonerate wrongly-convicted individuals. Mr. Rodner was awarded the highest possible AV Peer Review Rating by Martindale-Hubbell for both legal ability and ethical standards, and earned his B.A. from Amherst College in 1991 and J.D. from Duke University in 1994.

 

Charles S. Ryan, J.D., Ph.D., Dr. Ryan has over 18 years experience in managing all aspects of intellectual property litigation, conducting due diligence investigations and prosecuting patent and trademark applications in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.  Currently he is Senior Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Counsel for Forest Laboratories, Inc.  Dr. Ryan joined Forest in 2003 and was responsible for building the entire department.  He has successfully managed a team of attorneys in three multi-billion dollar litigations, resulting in a favorable conclusion each time.   Dr. Ryan is responsible for all aspects of patent and trademark litigations, due diligence investigations and patent and trademark prosecution strategies.  He serves as the Long Island Site Head for the 700 employees on Long Island and serves on the Board of Directors for Forest Laboratories Holdings, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Forest Laboratories Inc.  Prior to joining Forest, Dr. Ryan was Vice President, Technology Management and General Counsel for The Collaborative Group, Ltd., a research and manufacturing company that served the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and personal care industries.  He also served as Chief Operating Officer of Lab 21, Inc., a spinout company of the Collaborative Group.   Dr. Ryan was an associate at Darby & Darby, a law firm in New York City that specialized in intellectual property law.  Dr. Ryan has presented and published over 20 legal and scientific papers during his career.  While in law school, Dr. Ryan was a judicial intern for the Hon. Peter C. Dorsey in the U.S. District Court for Connecticut.  He received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Chemistry from the College of Wooster in 1986, and a doctorate in Biology and Pathology from Stony Brook University in 1990.  In 1993, Dr. Ryan received a law degree from Western New England College School of Law. Dr. Ryan is the Chair of the Development Council for Stony Brook University Medical Center, is on the Board of Trustees for The College of Wooster and serves on the Board of Governors for Touro Law School.

 

Jeff is a principal in the Forensic & Dispute Services practice of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, and the leader of its Analytic & Forensic Technology practice for the Northeast region. During his career, Jeff has consulted on a wide spectrum of electronic discovery, computer forensics, information governance, software/application development, and litigation support matters. He has led numerous efforts to assist clients in response to discovery demands arising from internal investigations, litigation and regulatory inquiries/subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, FINRA, Office of Thrift Supervision, State Attorney General and U.S. Attorney offices. He has assisted corporate legal departments in the development of strategies and programmatic solutions to address electronic discovery and related challenges. Prior to joining Deloitte, Jeff was a managing director at a consulting firm where he led a number of high profile electronic discovery investigations, served in a technical advisory capacity for records and information management engagements and led several engagements requiring expert witness testimony.

Education
Hobart College, Geneva NY: BA in Philosophy and Economics

 

With over twelve years of experience, Stewart has worked with numerous enterprise customers to design, deploy, and support email and file archiving solutions for regulatory compliance and eDiscovery objectives. As the Chief Technology Officer at Nuix, Stewart is responsible for evolving Nuix’s forensic technologies into a leading solution in the eDiscovery and corporate investigation markets. Stewart previously worked at ESI Strategies, the consulting division of RVM, was the Subject Matter Expert for Discovery and Archiving at CommVault and spent seven years at EMC enabling customers to build processes to effectively respond to electronic discovery requests. Stewart is a frequent speaker in both the legal and IT communities regarding the challenges of e-mail archiving, discovery and data management.

 

Caroline West joined Shire in May of 2005.  Her responsibilities include the oversight and development of a global compliance program, the corporate enterprise risk management effort, as well as the health, safety and environment and security functions. 

Before joining Shire, Ms. West was Vice President, Global Legal Compliance for Aventis (now sanofi-aventis) where she was responsible for the development and implementation of a global compliance program for 75,000 employees in 68 countries.  Prior to that she served in various capacities in Aventis and its predecessor, Rhône-Poulenc Rorer Inc. developing a compliance program at RPR, and having a variety of commercial and litigation responsibilities within the Legal Department from the time she joined RPR in 1992.  She served as Associate Counsel at UGI Corporation in Valley Forge, PA from 1990 – 1992 and began her legal career as an associate at the Philadelphia firm of Pepper Hamilton & Scheetz (now Pepper Hamilton) in 1985.

She holds an A.B. from Smith College and a J.D. from the Dickinson School of Law of Penn State University.  She is active with the Pharmaceutical Compliance Forum, other legal and industry-related groups.  She is a frequent speaker in the area of compliance and risk management.  She chairs the board of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia,  

 Ms. West resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

Steven Zalesin is a nationally recognized trial lawyer and a member of the Management Committee of the firm. He has extensive experience in intellectual property and complex commercial matters, and has successfully tried numerous cases in courts throughout the United States.  He also has represented clients in numerous arbitration proceedings, and has successfully argued appeals in several circuits.

A significant portion of Mr. Zalesin’s practice involves high-stakes commercial disputes in the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech industries.  In 2010, he successfully co-tried Johnson & Johnson’s successful case against Merck, arising out of Merck’s acquisition of Schering-Plough.  Under an agreement between Schering-Plough and J&J’s Centocor subsidiary, Centocor was entitled to reclaim the ex-U.S. distribution rights to its best-selling monoclonal antibodies, Remicade and Simponi, if Schering-Plough underwent a change of control (as defined in the agreement).  As widely reported, the case settled on favorable terms, with Merck agreeing to return to Centocor distribution rights in Canada, Central and South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific and to immediately increase the percentage of profits it pays to Centocor in Merck’s remaining territories (Europe, Russia and Turkey) from 42% to 50% (the percentage had not been due to increase to 50% until 2014). Merck also agreed to immediately pay Centocor $500 million.

In addition, in the past 18 months, Mr. Zalesin has conducted two arbitration hearings in the Hague in connection with a dispute arising under a co-development and distribution agreement for a well-known biotech drug.  Over the course of his career, he has represented pharmaceutical and biotech companies in disputes involving dozens of alliance agreements. 

Mr. Zalesin also represents Fortune 50 companies in patent litigation.  In 2010, he obtained summary judgment on behalf of the world’s largest software company, demonstrating that a competitor’s patent on voice recognition technology was obvious as a matter of law.

For the past 25 years, Mr. Zalesin has represented the nation's leading manufacturers and service providers in a series of landmark cases that have shaped the law of false advertising, while helping to preserve and grow the markets for our clients’ products. In one such case last year, Mr. Zalesin obtained summary judgment in favor of the world’s largest beverage manufacturer, defeating a claim that the company’s FDA-authorized label could nonetheless violate federal and state false advertising statutes. In another recent matter for the same client, he successfully defended the launch advertising for the company’s reformulated sports drink against a federal court challenge by its chief competitor.
 
Mr. Zalesin is listed in Chambers USA as a leading practitioner in the area of Advertising, where he is described as a “top-drawer,” “trustworthy” and “highly desired advertising litigator.” Clients praise his “superb conduct in front of judges and incredible industry knowledge.”
 
Mr. Zalesin is listed as “Litigation Star” in Euromoney/Institutional Investor’s Benchmark: America’s Leading Litigation Firms and Attorneys.  He has also been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America® in the area of Advertising Law, and was named New York Advertising Lawyer of the Year for 2011.