State Farm can view surgical records in lawsuit over claim [Orlando Sentinel]

Sept. 11--State Farm, aggressively defending itself against an auto-injury lawsuit filed by the Morgan & Morgan law firm, has persuaded a federal judge to order that a Brevard County neurosurgeon turn over his surgical logs to the giant insurance company.

The insurer alleged during a court hearing last week that the logs will provide a financial road map confirming that a "preset" deal existed between the surgeon, Dr. Ara Deukmedjian, and Morgan & Morgan to inflate medical charges included in personal-injury lawsuits.

Representatives of both the doctor and the law firm have denied that any such agreement existed.

Results of the Sept. 4 order issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Philip R. Lammens might make or break State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.'s defense in the long-running case. The lawsuit, filed by Morgan & Morgan in 2010, is shifting from evidence gathering to preparing for trial; if the surgeon's logs don't solidify State Farm's allegations, then it's not clear, based on gaps in evidence described by the insurance company in court, whether it will have a strong case.

There have been no allegations of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Deukmedjian or Morgan & Morgan. They are not named as part of the lawsuit, and Morgan & Morgan no longer represents the accident-injury victim who filed the suit in an attempt to force State Farm to pay her bills for surgery performed by Deukmedjian.

However, State Farm, in arguing that the accident victim's medical costs were excessive -- $61,788 for spinal surgery that its says Deukmedjian "typically performs in less than one hour" -- is trying to show a history of inflated charges for surgeries performed by Deukmedjian on Morgan & Morgan clients.

State Farm has alleged in court documents and in courtroom arguments that Deukmedjian had a standing agreement with Morgan & Morgan to bill far more for his surgeries on the law firm's auto-accident clients than he intended to collect. The inflated surgical costs, according to State Farm, could total millions of dollars and involve hundreds of personal-injury suits filed from the late 2000s to early this decade.

The case now has ties to a similar auto-injury lawsuit in state Circuit Court in Orlando. In that case, a former Morgan & Morgan paralegal testified last fall that Deukmedjian had an arrangement with the law firm to accept half the amount he billed for surgeries related to Morgan & Morgan lawsuits.

State Farm promptly introduced that state-court testimony in the federal case, which resulted in the company gaining further access to the records and correspondence of Morgan & Morgan and Deukmedjian.

In the federal case, the insurance company already has obtained from Morgan & Morgan hundreds of Deukmedjian invoices. But during last Tuesday's hearing before the magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in Ocala, State Farm lawyer David Spector repeated allegations also made in court documents: that Morgan & Morgan had provided invoices for only about two-thirds of the more than 700 patients who were both represented by the law firm and treated by Deukmedjian.

State Farm also has complained in court documents there are "large gaps of information" in the invoices provided by Morgan & Morgan, and that the billing information produced by the firm was "woefully incomplete and inadequate."

Spector said the surgical logs, which include details about each surgery's time, place, type and participants, should reveal which invoices and what information are missing.

"We will correlate them [surgical logs] with the invoices," Spector told the magistrate judge.

Morgan & Morgan's lawyer at the hearing did not speak during the proceedings, nor did the firm return phone calls seeking comment.

Deukmedjian's lawyer, Crystal Eiffert, had attempted to block State Farm's request for the surgical logs, calling it a "fishing expedition." The logs "do not address any of the issues involved in this litigation," Eiffert argued in a court document.

In court last week, Eiffert said State Farm had missed its opportunity to see the surgical logs, as the evidence-gathering phase of the lawsuit already had ended. She also argued that State Farm had failed to take advantage of pretrial testimony to which a Deukmedian representative had brought, and was ready to discuss, the logs.

Spector countered that the representative had been poorly informed about the surgical logs, having testified that he had scanned them for only about 15 minutes.

In ruling in State Farm's favor, the magistrate judge noted that the surgical logs had been "hotly contested" and that the Deukmedjian representative would been expected to have a more thorough knowledge of the logs.

Eiffert said Friday she planned to file an objection to the court order with the U.S. District Court judge in charge of the case.

kspear@tribune.com or 407-420-5062

___

(c)2012 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)

Visit The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.) at www.OrlandoSentinel.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services