The doctors and hospital officials found guilty in Dallas last year of taking part in a massive insurance fraud scheme won’t be getting their convictions reversed, and they won’t be granted new trials – at least not according the judge who presided at their seven-week trial.
In two separate orders filed Monday, U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary denied post-trial motions by the convicted Forest Park Medical Center defendants for judgments of acquittal, or, in the alternative, new trials. The rulings pave the way for defense attorneys to appeal their cases to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Notices of appeal are expected to be filed within the next two weeks.
The motions for post-trial relief were submitted to Zouhary last year, after a jury of three men and nine women returned guilty verdicts in April against seven defendants in the Forest Park fraud trial, the culmination of one of the federal government’s most far-reaching investigations into insurance abuse by doctors and hospital administrators.
Those convicted in Zouhary’s Dallas courtroom were:
— Three surgeons, Douglas Won, Michael Rimlawi, and Shawn Henry;
— A pain-management physician, Mike Shaw;
— One of Forest Park’s top administrators, Mac Burt;
— And two others affiliated with the now-defunct, physician-owned hospital, nurse Iris Forrest and healthcare consultant Jackson Jacob.
All were accused by the government of complicity in a multimillion-dollar scheme to steer surgery patients to Forest Park in exchange for bribes and kickbacks. The hospital, according to evidence presented at trial, then billed patients’ insurance carriers at rates far higher than what other Dallas-area hospitals would have charged for the same surgical procedures.
Collectively, the seven face the prospect of decades in federal custody; the court-ordered forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars in what the government claims were ill-gotten gains; and, in the case of the licensed healthcare providers, permanent revocation of their authorization to practice medicine in Texas.
Zouhary’s rulings denying the motions for post-trial relief were unsurprising. In essence, he was being asked to acknowledge that he had messed up at trial, or that the jurors under his guidance had wrongly reached their guilty verdicts.
Roundly rejecting the defense arguments, the judge, widely known for his genteel, kindly courtroom manner, minced no words. His tersely worded orders suggested that the defendants and their lawyers were wasting the court’s time.
“While defendants have filed over 300 pages of arguments,” he wrote, “not much is new. … Much of the flailing by the convicted defendants is meritless.”
Elsewhere, he added: “In the end, once you separate all the ‘noise,’ the trial involved a single pyramid conspiracy with a number of participants who understood that what they were doing was illegal. Attempts were made to paper their dishonest conduct – to hide behind sham contracts – which ultimately proved unsuccessful. … It is a sad story on a number of fronts.”
According to prosecution witnesses, the bribes paid to the doctors on trial – often totaling more than $1 million a month — were typically disguised as “marketing money,” ostensibly intended to jointly promote Forest Park and the surgeons who practiced there.
But Alan Beauchamp, the chief administrator at Forest Park, testified under a plea agreement with the government that the hospital’s written “marketing” agreements with physicians and their agents were merely a way to hide what Forest Park was really doing: “buying surgeries” from doctors on the take.
“We papered it up to make it look good,” he said.
Zouhary, in his orders, was particularly acerbic in rebutting defense claims that the jury failed in its duty to render honest, impartial, informed verdicts.
“During this seven-week trial,” the judge wrote, “the jurors, whom this court observed on a regular basis during court proceedings, were most attentive. Every single one. Their performance was remarkable given the trial’s length and complexity. To a person, they deserve this court’s gratitude for completing this important civic service.”
He singled out Rimlawi, a spinal surgeon accused of taking nearly $5 million in bribes from Forest Park, and his chief trial lawyer, Tom Mesereau of Los Angeles, for their performance at trial.
Rimlawi was the only physician among the defendants to take the stand. Under a withering cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Pfeifle, the surgeon’s testimony was rambling, whiny, condescending, sarcastic, and argumentative. “His credibility, to be kind, was shaky at best,” Zouhary wrote.
At the end of his closing argument, Mesereau, appealing to the sympathy of jurors, flashed on a video screen a photo of Rimlawi’s young son – a photo that had not been mentioned or admitted into evidence at trial.
Zouhary, in denying Rimlawi’s request for a new trial, called Mesereau’s action “inexcusable,” “dirty and nasty,” and “a cheap stunt for which there is absolutely no justification. A neophyte, let alone a seasoned trial lawyer, knows better.”