01-03-2022, 07:38 PM
(01-03-2022, 07:08 PM)ca245 Wrote: Ironically, it is the patients -- the people whom the jury did not convict her of defrauding -- who might have been the most injured. What if you received an erroneous Theranos test result saying that you did -- or did not -- have a serious disease, causing you in the first instance, to panic and expend a lot of time and money on more tests and doctors before finding out the correct situation, or, in the second instance, not get treatment until the disease progressed?
You're obviously right as a moral matter, but the problem is the federal charges related to the patients were all wire fraud charges. I'd imagine there are probably state contract or common law fraud charges the patients could bring as well as emotional distress charges, and probably state prosecutors could have considered state criminal charges related to her defrauding the patients. But I'm pretty confident if the best the feds could charge her with was wire fraud, there weren't any federal criminal charges that would have stuck.