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Health Care

  • OVERVIEW
  • PROFESSIONALS

Health Care Litigation

Our health care trial lawyers have built a reputation for winning through dispositive motion practice or trial verdicts. Our health care litigators concentrate their practice in representing health care clients. We understand the industry and the laws and regulations that apply to it. With this knowledge, together with our extensive trial and appellate experience, we are uniquely positioned to advocate for our health care clients.

Our health care litigation attorneys prosecute and defend actions nationwide. We are involved at all stages of the litigation process, including the initial suit evaluation, discovery, and the trying of all types of cases in state, federal and appellate courts and before arbitrators and mediators. We are committed to working together with our clients to develop effective litigation strategies and to consider settlement options and litigation alternatives.

For our institutional clients, we prosecute and defend actions ranging from RICO to antitrust. Complex contract actions often arise in the hospital and health system setting, and we possess the experience and industry knowledge to successfully litigate matters involving physicians, employees, joint venture partners, payors and third-party administrators. The litigators in our health care department have successfully defended antitrust actions ranging from physicians’ claims of exclusionary practices to government suits to block mergers.

Our attorneys offer an unmatched combination of skills, experience and resources to resolve complex class action disputes involving the health care industry. We have successfully defended our clients in a variety of class action lawsuits in Federal and state courts throughout the United States. Our experience includes obtaining pre-certification dismissals and summary judgments, conducting class discovery, defeating class certification and obtaining decertification of classes in cases of both local and national scope. Our litigators are currently involved in defending a number of class actions involving health care providers and payors. In the recent wave of class action suits filed against tax-exempt hospitals alleging failure to fulfill their obligations related to uninsured patients, we were selected to represent the Sisters of Mercy Health System in the following two cases: Donna M. Meierer vs St. John’s Regional Health Center and Melissa Bennett vs. St. Mary – Rogers Memorial Hospital, Inc.

Our attorneys have long represented managed care organizations in many types of lawsuits. We have extensive experience defending claims arising from denial of a claim and third party administrator decisions. We have also represented managed care organizations in lawsuits against governmental agencies and other complex contract actions.

Additionally, our attorneys have successfully litigated privacy lawsuits, payment disputes, health care employment suits and white-collar actions for a variety of health care clients. Representative actions include:

  • Securities and commodities
  • Warranty and UCC
  • Construction cases
  • Condemnation
  • ERISA
  • False Claims Act
  • Libel and slander
  • Creditors’ work – from routine collections to sophisticated reorganizations
  • Patents
  • RICO
  • Common law fraud
  • Statutory and constitutional interpretative questions
  • Injunctive and equitable proceedings
  • Environmental issues
Partners
Allred, Allen D.
Buchholz, Edward J.
Fink, Jeffrey R.
Fogle, James L.
Friedman, Lawrence C.
Goldfarb, Evan Raskas
Goldstein, A. Jay
Goturi, Milada R.
Gunn, James F.
Hennessy, Joyce Harris
Kamensky, Robert N.
Landwehr, Matthew J.
Lang, Richard J.
Lause, Michael F.
Lawton, Richard L.
Mayes, Gary
Miller, Jan Paul
Minogue, Thomas J.
Morris, Michael J.
Schenk, Claire M.
Associates
Oliver, Tonya M.
  • AmeriNet, Inc.
  • Anderson Hospital
  • Ascension Health
  • Bethesda Health Group
  • BJC Health System
  • Community Living, Inc.
  • Cooperative Home Care
  • CoreLink, LLC
  • Essence Group Holdings Corporation
  • The Gatesworth
  • Hillsboro Area Health System
  • McKnight Place Assisted Living
  • McKnight Place Extended Care
  • Mercy Health
  • Midwest Neurosurgeons, LLC
  • Parc Provence
  • Pharmerica Corporation
  • Prairie Spine & Pain Institute
  • QualSight, Inc.
  • Ranken Jordan, A Pediatric Specialty Hospital
  • Saint Anthony’s Health System, Alton, IL
  • Saint Peters Bone and Joint Surgery, Inc.
  • Sparta Community Hospital
  • St. Charles Orthopaedic Surgery Associates
  • St. Edward Mercy Medical Center, Fort Smith, AR
  • St. John’s Health System, Springfield, MO
  • St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, St. Louis, MO
  • United Healthcare Group
  • Thompson Coburn obtained a major victory for United Healthcare, who was sued by Signature Health Services, Inc., a 120-physician group, seeking to hold United Healthcare liable for millions of dollars in penalties under the federal racketeering statute (RICO) and the Missouri Prompt Payment Act. Signature also asked the court to revamp United Healthcare’s claim processing system. In May 2006, the district court ruled in favor of United Healthcare and rejected Signature’s claims. In March 2009, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment. In a unanimous decision, the Eighth Circuit ruled that Signature did not have a viable RICO claim. 
  • We represented a health insurer in a class action lawsuit in Missouri alleging that the health insurer imposed copayments for medical services and outpatient prescription drugs that allegedly exceeded copayment limits in the health insurer’s ERISA-governed health plans and the Missouri Department of Insurance Copayment Regulation. 
  • We represented several hospitals in class action lawsuits in Missouri, Illinois and Arkansas brought by uninsured patients who alleged that the hospitals overcharged them for medical services because the hospitals did not afford to the uninsured patients the same discounts from the hospitals’ standard charges that the hospitals afforded to insurance companies pursuant to provider agreements or to the Medicare and Medicaid programs pursuant to statutes. Several of these lawsuits have been dismissed for failure to state a viable claim against the hospitals. In one lawsuit, class certification was denied. 
  • We represented a hospital in a class action lawsuit in Illinois challenging the hospital’s practice of asserting health care provider liens for the full amount of billed charges in automobile accidents where the patients had insurance coverage with insurers that had a provider agreement with the hospital under which the hospital agreed to accept a discounted payment from the insurers as payment in full. 
  • Our attorneys served as letter of credit bank counsel in connection with more than $400 million in bond and other financings for PeaceHealth, an integrated multistate hospital and health care system in the Pacific Northwest. The bonds were structured as variable rate securities issued by two state authorities and were enhanced by bank letters of credit provided by a syndicate of multiple banks led by two issuing banks. The firm documented both the bond letter of credit materials, as well as the bank syndicate materials. Our attorneys also represented the bank group agent in connection with a bridge line of credit that allowed the hospital system to access the credit markets in advance of the bond financing in order to avoid rising interest rates on its existing bond indebtedness. 
  • We assist clients with respect to the administration of retiree medical plans. We also counsel and defend clients with respect to the modification and termination of such plans. We successfully initiated a defendant class action related to our client, materially reducing its retiree medical benefits. 
  • We have represented numerous clients in negotiating, documenting and implementing merger, asset acquisition, membership interest/stock acquisition, joint venture, religious sponsorship and affiliation transactions for nonprofit and for-profit clients.