Barry Sherman* parks his 2005 Chrysler Sebring convertible in the spot closest to the main door of the Apotex headquarters in Weston. Although Sherman, the CEO and founder, is the country’s 10th richest man, with a personal wealth of about $3.7 billion, he’s notoriously thrifty. He’s owned only four cars in his life, driving them until they’re ready to junk. When Sherman founded the company in 1974, generic drugs were generally dismissed as flawed imitations of the real thing. Since then, Apotex has become Canada’s largest drug manufacturer, filling 75 million prescriptions a year. Most of the company’s 300 products are versions of such widely used drugs as the antidepressant Paxil, the antihistamine Claritin and the antibiotic Tetracyn. Apotex tests and develops its products with a staff of 2,100 scientists, who run a 105-bed clinical hospital for human guinea pigs.

Sherman also spends a small fortune on litigation—a full 50 per cent of what he invests in research. Generic manufacturers like Apotex live or die by the speed with which they can plunge into the market­place with copycat versions. So they make it their business to shorten the duration that brand name companies hold on to drug monopolies, weighing potential profits against the risk of lawsuits. It’s not unusual for Apotex—probably the country’s biggest litigator—to be engaged in 100 court cases simultaneously.

The firm gained international notoriety in the ’90s, during a vicious battle with Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a clinical researcher at SickKids, who denounced as unsafe the Apotex-sponsored trials of a drug for a rare blood condition. Last year, Apotex endured another public relations nightmare when it was revealed that the company had reached a $40-million backroom deal to delay selling a version of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s blockbuster anticoagulant Plavix.

While Sherman has successfully taken on big pharma, he hasn’t been as lucky with his own relatives. He’s the principal defendant in a $1‑bil­lion lawsuit brought last year by two of his cousins, the unfortunate heirs of the late Louis Winter, founder of Empire Laboratories, a forerunner to Apotex. They claim Sherman didn’t honour an option agreement that would have allowed them employment in the family business and the right to purchase, collectively, 20 per cent of the company shares. Sherman has also sued, recalling more than $8 million in loans he had made to his cousin Kerry Winter, the most aggressive of Lou’s sons. Winter has a history of drug addiction and has already spent years of his adult life entangled in this feud. Sherman, with a battalion of lawyers and bountiful resources, calls it extortion and refuses to settle.

Barry and Honey Sherman live in an unassuming, modern house on one of those mature York Mills streets where ranch-style bungalows are being replaced by French châteaux. Barry had refused my interview requests, but his wife, Honey, had agreed to speak to me. On the day I visited, their front door was opened by a hearty bleached-blonde housekeeper wearing khaki shorts and Crocs. She took me to wait near the kitchen, where Barry Sherman stood in a blue terry cloth robe at the counter in his bare feet, reading the paper and eating breakfast.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. Either Honey had not told him about the interview or he’d forgotten. He listened to my explanation, then went back to his paper. No small talk. Honey appeared, dressed not unlike her housekeeper in a white T-shirt, green pants and white Crocs, no jewellery. She’s short and solidly built, with heavy eyebrows, sable hair and the look of someone who plays tennis daily. It once was one of her sports, along with skiing, but now she plays golf when she can, her athletic life curtailed by severe arthritis.

She led me down a hall beside a glassed-in swimming pool. The house had an overstuffed 1980s look, with lots of leather, glossy stone floors and a spiral staircase. We sat across from each other in the den, close to her workstation piled high with papers. Honey Reich, the daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, met Barry in 1970, just after graduating from the University of Toronto and before starting to teach. It was her mother’s suggestion that she volunteer at Mount Sinai to meet a nice Jewish doctor, and Honey considered that not such a bad idea. A friend fixed her up with Barry, and a year later, when both were still in their 20s, they married. She calls herself a trophy wife who “came a little early.”

* No relation to the author.