A Sixth Circuit panel on Tuesday told an Ohio federal judge to go back to the drawing board in a Dayton medical center’s antitrust suit against a conglomeration of hospitals, finding there are real questions about whether the group is conspiring to control care in the region.
The Medical Center at Elizabeth Place LLC brought some significant evidence to support its claims that Premier Health Partners, an affiliation of four hospitals, has sought a monopoly by punishing insurers and doctors if they give the center business, two circuit judges wrote in a decision overturning the district court’s dismissal of the suit...
The majority opinion is largely based on Supreme Court precedent in the case of American Needle Inc. v. National Football League in determining that agreements bringing together independent centers of decision-making like the Premier hospitals that still function separately and compete present a potential violation of the Act...
“Everybody in this case recognized that American Needle was the key authority, and we had a different interpretation of that case and so did the Sixth Circuit,” Anne Johnson of Haynes and Boone LLP, one of the attorneys for the Medical Center, told Law360 Tuesday.
Excerpted from Law360. Read the full article on the Sixth Circuit Decision (subscription required).