A mistrial was declared last week in one of the biggest healthcare fraud cases in Texas, after a medical emergency involving a defense lawyer brought the case to a halt during testimony in federal court in Dallas.
After hearing arguments from both sides, and polling jurors on whether they thought they could pick up where they left off after a monthlong delay, U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay last Monday pulled the plug on the criminal trial of four people — a surgeon, a pharmacist, the pharmacist’s brother and the brother’s stepson — accused of bilking the government out of $158 million.
Lindsay reset the trial to next Sept. 11
Investigators said the defendants were at the heart of a bribery-and-kickback scheme to generate thousands of bogus — and unnecessary — prescriptions for costly, custom-formulated medications, ostensibly to treat federally insured government workers for on-the-job injuries or work-related illnesses.
The defendants are:
- Jamshid (James) Noryian of Travis County and Dehshid (David) Nourian of Collin County, brothers identified by investigators as the architects of the scam. (Of Iranian descent, the two adopted different English spellings of their surname after immigrating to the United States.) James Noryian operated three pharmacies in Tarrant County; David Nourian, a pharmacist, worked for his brother.
James Noryian is represented by Jeff Kearney and Catherine Stanley of the Kearney Law Firm in Fort Worth.
During the aborted trial, David Nourian was represented by Michael P. Gibson of Burleson Pate & Gibson in Dallas. Last week, court records show, he retained new counsel: Brent Evan Newton of Gerger Hennessy & Martin in Houston and Diane Kozub, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Dallas.
- Michael Taba, a Plano orthopedic surgeon. Taba is represented by Jeff King of Dallas and Philip D. Ray of Frisco.
- Christopher Rydberg of Tarrant County, Noryian’s stepson and an executive with the pharmacies. He’s represented by Barry Sorrels and Stephanie Luce Ola of Sorrels Ola in Dallas.
Their trial began with jury selection Oct. 18.
On Oct. 31, six days into the government’s case, Judge Lindsay was notified that one of the defense attorneys “had a medical emergency that required immediate attention.” Lindsay wrote in his order declaring a mistrial.
Public records in the case file do not identify the lawyer, beyond use of the pronoun “his,” or describe the medical condition, beyond saying it required surgery.
Upon learning of the lawyer’s medical setback, Lindsay continued the trial to Nov. 7. But recovery was slower than expected, the judge wrote. He’d already promised the jury Thanksgiving week off, and with weeks of testimony still to come, the case could well spill into Christmas and maybe into 2023.
“Defendants were concerned that jurors would be distracted, rush their deliberations, and hold the delay against them if the trial continued,” he wrote.
After polling the jurors, Lindsay declared a mistrial — a power of the court, he wrote, that “ought to be used with the greatest caution, under urgent circumstances, and for very plain and obvious causes.”
By next September, the case will be in its seventh year, delayed in part by the 2020 pandemic. The latest trial setting is the 10th since the defendants were indicted by a federal grand jury in Dallas. (A revised indictment was issued in September 2019.)
The four remaining defendants are among nine people – including three doctors – who were charged in the case. One doctor, Kevin Williams, an orthopedic surgeon from Ennis, cut a plea deal with prosecutors in July 2019. Another, Leslie Benson of Waco, died last June.
One defendant, identified as Ali Khavarmanesh, a Tarrant County pharmacy owner, is a government fugitive.
On the eve of trial in October, charges were dismissed against Noryian’s elderly mother and his sister, a dentist in Plano.