A month af­ter oust­ing CFO Josh Smi­ley for send­ing “in­ap­pro­pri­ate mes­sages” to em­ploy­ees, Eli Lil­ly is fac­ing new al­le­ga­tions that an ex­ec­u­tive and a se­nior man­ag­er at its Wash­ing­ton, DC of­fice sex­u­al­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against and ha­rassed mul­ti­ple women.

Sonya Elling, a for­mer Lil­ly lob­by­ist of about 16 years, filed a law­suit in fed­er­al court last Fri­day ac­cus­ing her sec­ond-lev­el su­per­vi­sor Leigh Ann Pusey of mak­ing sex­ist re­marks about her, un­der­min­ing her au­thor­i­ty, and sub­ject­ing her to a “sex­u­al­ly hos­tile work en­vi­ron­ment,” even­tu­al­ly forc­ing her to re­sign.

Leigh Ann Pusey

The com­plaint states that Pusey “reg­u­lar­ly mocked and be­lit­tled” Elling and oth­er fe­male em­ploy­ees, re­fer­ring to them as “nasty,” “mean,” and a “bitch.” And that an­oth­er su­per­vi­sor Shawn O’Neail, who Pusey hired in 2019, made “sex­u­al­ly ag­gres­sive ges­tures” to­ward the em­ploy­ees.

Lil­ly de­nied the al­le­ga­tions in a state­ment to End­points News. 

“Lil­ly is com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing and pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of di­ver­si­ty and re­spect, and a work en­vi­ron­ment free of dis­crim­i­na­tion, ha­rass­ment or re­tal­i­a­tion of any kind,” spokesper­son Kathryn Beis­er said in an email. “We hold all em­ploy­ees ac­count­able to our core val­ues and be­lieve our ex­ec­u­tives car­ry an even high­er bur­den in en­sur­ing those val­ues are up­held.”

Pusey was tapped as se­nior vice pres­i­dent of cor­po­rate af­fairs and com­mu­ni­ca­tions in May 2017, months af­ter CEO Dave Ricks took the helm.

Among the ac­cu­sa­tions is that Pusey told Elling, who was 49 at the time, that her age would keep her from suc­cess­ful­ly en­gag­ing with mem­bers of Con­gress be­cause she wasn’t a “pret­ty young thing.” And she no­tice­ably pre­ferred male col­leagues, ac­cord­ing to Elling, of­ten flirt­ing and call­ing them names like “young buck.”

In May 2018, a col­league re­ferred to as “Em­ploy­ee Y” re­port­ed “sex­ist com­ments” that Pusey al­leged­ly made about Elling and oth­er fe­male em­ploy­ees. In a re­port to Joseph Kel­ley, Lil­ly’s for­mer vice pres­i­dent of glob­al gov­ern­ment and in­ter­na­tion­al cor­po­rate af­fairs, the em­ploy­ee wrote:

I gen­uine­ly be­lieve that Pusey has cre­at­ed a hos­tile work­place en­vi­ron­ment, and that in many ways, she tru­ly is a work­place bul­ly. Frankly, I have con­cerns about my po­si­tion, and be­cause Pusey has shown lim­it­ed com­pe­tence in terms of ex­hibit­ing the Lil­ly val­ues – Re­spect for Peo­ple, In­tegri­ty and Ex­cel­lence – I am gen­uine­ly con­cerned that she may take re­tal­ia­to­ry ac­tion against my­self or my team.

Elling ac­cus­es Pusey of re­tal­i­at­ing af­ter that, ex­clud­ing her and an­oth­er col­league from im­por­tant projects, meet­ings and com­mu­ni­ca­tions that were part of their job re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Shawn O’Neail

Af­ter Kel­ley re­tired in 2019, Pusey hired O’Neail as a re­place­ment, who was on a mis­sion to “clean house,” the com­plaint states. Elling ac­cused O’Neail of en­gag­ing in “in­ap­pro­pri­ate sex­u­al self-grop­ing in her of­fice, at her eye lev­el and in vi­o­la­tion of her per­son­al space.”

The No­var­tis vet al­leged­ly has a his­to­ry of “misog­y­nis­tic, as well as racist, be­hav­ior,” ac­cord­ing to the com­plaint, which ac­cus­es O’Neail of us­ing the “n” word to re­fer to a Pfiz­er lob­by­ist. It al­so ac­cus­es him of chang­ing his clothes in an all-glass con­fer­ence room “in full view of fe­male staff mem­bers” while work­ing at No­var­tis.

It isn’t clear how Elling’s coun­sel knows of these past ac­cu­sa­tions. End­points reached out to No­var­tis to ver­i­fy the claims, but a com­pa­ny spokesper­son would on­ly con­firm that O’Neail worked there, and that he left two years ago. End­points al­so reached out to Elling’s at­tor­ney, and has not re­ceived a re­sponse.

In a meet­ing with HR, O’Neail false­ly ac­cused Elling of mak­ing dis­parag­ing com­ments about Lil­ly to con­gres­sion­al staff, that law­suit states. He even­tu­al­ly put Elling on a per­for­mance im­prove­ment plan, which was “rid­dled with mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions, as well as neg­a­tive stereo­types of women,” ac­cord­ing to the com­plaint.

Josh Smi­ley

On Dec. 1, 2019, Elling sent in her res­ig­na­tion, ex­plain­ing that she was forced to leave due to Pusey and O’Neail’s “dis­crim­i­na­tion and re­tal­i­a­tion” against her, the suit states.

That was just a cou­ple months be­fore Smi­ley the com­pa­ny’s fi­nance chief, was dis­missed over an “in­ap­pro­pri­ate per­son­al re­la­tion­ship” with an em­ploy­ee. The CFO was cit­ed for send­ing “con­sen­su­al but in­ap­pro­pri­ate per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions” to mul­ti­ple team mem­bers, Lil­ly said. The drug­mak­er didn’t spec­i­fy the con­tent of those mes­sages or whether they were ex­plic­it­ly sex­u­al in na­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing, Smi­ley was forced to for­feit $24 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion as he walked out the door.

A pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this ar­ti­cle stat­ed that Pusey and O’Neail were ac­cused of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. The sto­ry has been up­dat­ed to re­flect that they were ac­cused of sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion, and ha­rass­ment. 

A New Jersey biotech whose only approved drug is used as a painkiller after surgeries is suing a scientific journal, its editors and a handful of authors for libel after the publication printed numerous papers and editorials that the company says discredited the drug.

Pacira Biosciences filed the complaint against the American Society of Anesthesiologists in the US District Court for New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon. A February issue of the group’s journal Anesthesiology printed three articles and other content full of “bias” that “seriously disparaged” the drug Exparel, Pacira claimed.