Sunday, February 28, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Carilion case is full of intrigue
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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You missed a real interesting show Thursday in Roanoke Circuit Court Judge Clifford Weckstein's courtroom.
It involves what initially seemed like a run-of-the-mill medical malpractice lawsuit against Carilion Clinic, two of its subsidiaries, five of its doctors, six other doctors and two private medical practices.
But this is no ordinary lawsuit, because now plaintiff Ronald Burchett is alleging a giant conspiracy by Carilion to choke off referrals to outside doctors.
The claim has been repeatedly made but never proved by a group of private physicians in this town, and Carilion Clinic vehemently denies it.
The dozen or so lawyers in the case have been quarreling and casting all kinds of nasty aspersions.
And Weckstein is growing weary of acting like a referee in a North Cross-Roanoke Catholic high school basketball game.
Thursday, the judge lectured one lawyer with lines from the hilarious movie "My Cousin Vinny."
But the case reminds me more of another famous Hollywood courtroom film: "The Verdict."
Remember that one? It came out in 1982, starred Paul Newman and earned him an Academy Award nomination. It's one of the great "underdog" movies of all time.
Newman played a down-at-the-heels, solo-practice attorney who took on a huge hospital and its squadron of lawyers in a medical malpractice case.
For much of the movie it looks like he'll lose.
Allow me to draw a scene for you from the spectators' gallery Thursday of Burchett v. Carilion et al.
On the left side of the room, sitting at the defense table, are three silk-stocking defense lawyers who are among the cream of this city's large crop. Two more people (they looked like lawyers, too) sit in chairs behind them because there isn't enough room at the defense table.
In the front pew on the left side of the spectators' gallery sat even more lawyers, who at various times stood and addressed the judge. I didn't recognize them, but there were a bunch. That's understandable considering there are 17 separate defendants in the case.
All of them looked fit, fashionable, attentive and very expensive.
On the right side of the room, all alone at the plaintiff's table, was attorney Robert Hovis. He's a successful medical malpractice specialist from Annandale whose office is in a commercial district just down the street from a fried chicken stand.
Hovis is portly, looks like he's in his 60s and has the kind of mussed gray hair that suggests he needs a barber.
He was dressed in a blue suit that probably cost a lot of money but looks cheap anyway, because that's the way even nice suits look on portly people (like me).
On the plaintiff's table was his attache, a battered light-brown leather number about the size of a small suitcase. It looks like something the Fuller brush man would have carried door to door in the 1940s.
He declined to discuss the case, but we bantered briefly about the attache.
"How old is that?" I asked him.
He chuckled and replied, "I don't know. It's been through some wars."
This case is certainly that.
In the lawsuit, Burchett alleges that Carilion, its doctors and some other private physicians were negligent in caring for him in 2008, and that if they had cared for him properly, his colon wouldn't have burst after he had been in intensive care at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for 10 days.
Burchett almost died because of that, and the lawsuit claims he is now disabled. He wants $10 million, which he'll never get because of the state's cap on medical malpractice awards.
Burchett is seeking another $10 million from Dr. Ed Murphy, the Carilion CEO whom Burchett claims developed a policy that strongly discourages Carilion doctors from referring patients to non-Carilion specialists.
Were it not for that, Roanoke Memorial would have consulted an outside gastroenterologist earlier, the lawsuit alleges. That's more or less the so-called conspiracy, and damages for claims like that are not capped.
Now, I am wholly unqualified to judge whether malpractice occurred, so this column will leave that one alone.
But the conspiracy claim seems weak to me, because Burchett's lawsuit notes Carilion brought in an outside gastroenterologist two days after his admission. That was roughly eight days before Burchett's colon burst.
Besides that, my own Carilion family practitioner has referred me to three non-Carilion specialists in the past two years. In at least one of those instances, Carilion employed doctors in the specialty.
But if you remember "The Verdict," Paul Newman's case looked like a loser, too.
Until, that is, he discovered evidence from hospital workers and medical records of errors that grievously injured his client, and a conspiracy to cover those up.
Weckstein's ruling Thursday potentially paves the way for Hovis to get his hands on a lot more Carilion records.
That's why this case is so interesting.
Stay tuned.
