Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds’ Hit-List

Howard Root started his career as a lawyer, but quickly turned into a medical device entrepreneur and never looked back. In 1997, he founded Vascular Solutions to turn a physician’s idea into a commercial medical device. Over the next 20 years, Howard led Vascular Solutions in inventing and developing over 100 new medical devices, creating over 650 good-paying American jobs along the way.

But in 2011, the federal government threatened to destroy his company and send Howard to prison. All over one device. A device that never harmed a single patient and made up less than 1% of the company's sales. Even after the charges were proved baseless, the Department of Justice proceeded with a felony indictment of Howard and his company. Finally, in 2016, after hiring 121 lawyers at a cost of $25 million and without calling a single witness to testify, Howard and Vascular Solutions received a complete acquittal following a four-week trial. One juror emailed him afterward: "What the federal government did to you, your company and your employees is nothing short of criminal.”

After the verdict, Howard sold Vascular Solutions for $1 billion and retired at the age of 56. He then detailed his true-life legal nightmare in his book: Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds’ Hit-List. Now in retirement, Howard has turned his case into his cause, speaking out about how federal prosecutors use vague regulations and malicious tactics to prosecute innocent defendants and what can be done to check the virtually unlimited power of prosecutors in America.