BLT reports that the Wilmer law firm may well have to pay $ 214 million in legal malrpactice settlement fees, all depending on a case in which they have no say. From the article:

"Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr is facing the prospect of making $214 million in payments to one of its clients, in what would be an unusually large settlement of a malpractice claim.

Whether Wilmer will be forced to make the payments is still up in the air, depending largely on the outcome of litigation and on legislation moving through Congress. William Perlstein, Wilmer’s co-managing partner, who signed a settlement in February outlining the possible payments to New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company The Medicines Co., said on Tuesday he’s confident it will prove unnecessary.

The amount of money at stake potentially puts the case among the largest public settlements for legal malpractice ever, people who work in the field say.

The malpractice claim has its origins a decade ago, when Wilmer was representing The Medicines Co. in its bid to extend the patent for Angiomax, an anti-blood-clotting drug. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled that Wilmer lawyers filed the extension application at least a day after a key deadline — a decision that threatened to cost the drug company five years of exclusive drug sales.

In a major win for Wilmer and The Medicines Co., a federal judge last year vacated the patent office’s decision and cleared the way for the patent extension to go forward. If nothing changes, Wilmer is not expected to have to pay the $214 million.

The issue is still alive, though, because one of the drug company’s competitors has appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The case is pending there. (The patent office decided not to appeal.)

The agreement Wilmer signed in February is a contingency in case the Federal Circuit reverses or there’s another unexpected development. So, if a generic version of Angiomax is sold in the United States before June 15, 2015 as a result of the deadline issue, the firm would owe $214 million, $99 million of which would be covered by the firm’s insurance."