Background
In 2016, individuals connected with West Virginia’s Camden Clark Medical Center filed a qui tam alleging false claims, kickbacks, and Stark Law violations by a competing health system, Marietta Area Healthcare.[1] That qui tam was ultimately voluntarily dismissed by the Camden Clark-connected whistleblowers prior to Marietta being served with the complaint.[2]
That’s when Marietta did what every hospital accused of fraud dreams of: they sued the whistleblowers.
Marietta claims that the whistleblowers engaged in malicious prosecution and tortious interference by filing a qui tam based merely on what it calls “flimsy accusations.”[3] According to Marietta, the whistleblowers sought to tarnish the competing hospital by triggering a federal investigation, which Marietta labeled in its complaint as an “egregious intentional misuse of the judicial system.”[4]
And then Marietta added a new defendant: the general counsel of the competing health system, Camden Clark Medical Center, who was not one of the whistleblowers.[5]
That general counsel was alleged in Marietta’s amended complaint to have developed, planned, and strategized with the whistleblowers the qui tam against Marietta.[6] According to Marietta’s complaint, the general counsel teamed with the whistleblowers to harm Marietta, including causing physicians to terminate their business relationship with them after learning of the federal investigation that flowed from the qui tam.[7] In other words, the general...
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