BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — An attorney for a health clinic in a Montana town polluted with deadly asbestos asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to reverse a lower court determination that it submitted hundreds of false claims on behalf of patients.
That judgment came last year in a jury trial following a lawsuit against the clinic from Texas-based BNSF Railway, which separately has been found liable over contamination in Libby, Montana, that's sickened or killed thousands of people. Asbestos-tainted vermiculite was mined from a nearby mountain and shipped through the 3,000-person town by rail over decades.
After BNSF questioned the validity of more than 2,000 cases of asbestos-related diseases found by the clinic, a jury last year said 337 of those cases were based on false claims, making patients eligible for Medicare and other benefits they shouldn’t have received.
The judge overseeing the case ordered the clinic to pay almost $6 million in penalties and fees. However, even if the lower court ruling is affirmed, the clinic won't have to pay that money, under a separate settlement it reached in bankruptcy court with BNSF and the federal government, court documents show.
Clinic attorney Tim Bechtold told the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that Libby's Center for Asbestos Related Disease acted in compliance with federal law.
A provision in the 2009 Affordable Care Act sponsored by former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat,...
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