Michael M. Amir

Doll Amir & Eley LLP

Los Angeles

Litigation

Amir is a co-founder and name partner at Doll Amir & Eley LLP, where his clients include HMOs, hospital medical staff and individual physicians.

He said the coronavirus pandemic has squelched civil litigation--for the moment. "No one is filing lawsuits right now, but the health care space should be OK. We're just trying to keep everyone here busy while we wait for the floodgates to re-open in June or July. There will be a big backlog then, with criminal cases first in line. Civil matters will be pushed to the bottom of the docket."

Serving as lead counsel, Amir successfully defended his HMO client against a $120 million suit filed by five hospital facilities over charges he called inflated and unwarranted. The case settled for far below the sum the hospitals asked. St. John's Regional Medical Center v. Heritage Provider Network Inc., BC666023 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed June 22, 2017).

And Amir prevailed for his medical staff client in a case over physician autonomy that has national implications for how hospitals operate. The California Medical Association retained him to represent doctors at the institution then known as Tulare Regional Medical Center, south of Visalia, now rebranded Adventist Health Tulare.

"It became clear that the hospital had one thing in mind--to take control away from its doctors," Amir said. "It was a coup d'etat by the administration."

Hospital officials had replaced duly-elected medical staff leadership with hospital-friendly doctors that Amir labeled puppets.

"Medical staff is supposed to be separate from the business side," Amir said. "This is an issue very near and dear to the CMA."

The medical association said that losing the case would mean that medical staff self-governance would have become meaningless. Amir replaced lawyers from another firm who failed to get a trial court injunction against the leadership change.

"We did very aggressive discovery and it became clear how focused the administrators were to take control away from the doctors."

Amir said it was a little tricky showing up as an outsider in a rural county. "We had to be careful as out-of-town big city lawyers. It took awhile for the judge to get comfortable with us."

After a three-weeks-plus bench trial, Tulare County Superior Court Judge David C. Mathias in July 2018 ordered reinstatement with all rights, privileges and status of the staff that was fired and replaced; the hospital agreed to pay $300,000 in legal fees. Tulare Regional Medical Center Medical Staff v. Tulare Local Healthcare District, VCU264227 (Tulare Super. Ct., filed Feb. 10, 2016).

"Now doctors can continue to govern themselves without fear even in small communities where hospital staff does not have deep pockets to fight management," Amir said.

-- John Roemer