Lightfoot, Franklin & White Partners Brandon K. Essig and Jack Sharman Publish Article in Medical Economics

June 21, 2017

Lightfoot, Franklin & White LLC partners Brandon K. Essig and Jack Sharman co-authored an article published in Medical Economics titled “Risk management lessons from an opioid trial.”

In writing the article, Essig and Sharman drew from their recent experience in a federal “pill mill” prosecution stemming from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s “Operation Pillution” crackdown on the overprescription of opioids.

“Physicians and other practitioners who prescribe controlled substances are participating in what is perhaps the most high-risk practice of medicine today,” write Essig and Sharman. “But criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits brought against practitioners for their prescribing practices do provide some guidance.”

The article outlines common factors of prescriber liability and what healthcare providers need to know to manage the risk of prosecution. Medical Economics is the leading business resource for office-based physicians and is read by hundreds of thousands of primary care doctors across the U.S.

Essig recently joined Lightfoot after nearly eight years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Alabama where he tried a number of cases and led numerous criminal investigations of both companies and individuals. Prior to his time at the Department of Justice, he was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps where he served as a prosecutor and later deployed to Iraq with an infantry unit.

Sharman leads Lightfoot’s white collar practice and has nearly 30 years of experience in corporate internal investigations, fraud and corruption defense work. He also served as special counsel to the Alabama House Judiciary Committee in the recent impeachment investigation of former Alabama governor Robert Bentley.