Golden v. Sound Inpatient Physicians Med. Grp., Inc. — Dec. 2015 (Summary)

UNLAWFUL COMPETITIVE BUSINESS ACTIONS

Golden v. Sound Inpatient Physicians Med. Grp., Inc.
No. 14-cv-00497-TLN-EFB (E.D. Cal. Dec. 11, 2015)

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California granted in part and denied in part a medical group’s motion to strike and dismiss. The plaintiff physician, a hospitalist, entered into individual contracts with physicians on Dameron Hospital’s medical staff to provide inpatient care to their patients. This was after the hospital had chosen the rival, defendant medical group to provide hospitalist services.

The medical group sought to convince the particular medical staff physicians to change their designations for hospitalist care (between the physician and the medical group), and to convince all staff physicians to send their inpatients to the medical group for hospitalist care. To do this, the medical group sent letters to physicians stating that the plaintiff physician did not practice at the hospital anymore, even though, in fact, she did. The group also sent a nurse to visit physicians’ offices to inform them that the plaintiff physician no longer practiced at the hospital. Lastly, the group had emergency room staff informed that they were no longer to check to see if the plaintiff physician had been designated as the hospitalist of choice as all patients had now been assigned to the group.

The physician claimed that under the California Business and Professional Code the medical group was in violation of misleading advertising and unlawful/fraudulent business acts. The court granted a motion to dismiss for the misleading advertising claim. The court found that the group was not engaged in advertising per se, and that the group’s actions did not meet the state law requirement that the public be harmed by the actions involved. However, the court did not grant the motion to dismiss for the claim of unlawful business actions because the physician plaintiff had made sufficient factual allegations which created a plausible claim for relief.