Jeff Cox is being honored this month as "one of our region's brightest and best young and upcoming leaders." Sponsored by The Business News, the "40 Under 40" awards program recognizes the Miami Valley's emerging leaders in business, law, education, government, community and social services, and high technology.
The turn of the new Millennium continues to bring news of FG&I victories. On a widely-watched piece of Y2K litigation, FG&I's Ann Wightman and Ron Raether, representing Reynolds & Reynolds, successfully defeated a motion for class certification in a hotly-disputed class action lawsuit brought in Montgomery County, Ohio, Common Pleas Court by an Arkansas auto dealership. To FG&I's knowledge, the Magistrate's denial of class certification in a matter alleging that Reynolds & Reynolds had a duty to provide a free "Y2K fix" was the first such decision in Ohio, and one of the few denials of class certification in the country in a Y2K matter.
In other class action litigation news, on March 17, 2000, a three-judge appellate panel unanimously affirmed the decision of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court that awarded damages in excess of $12.4 million in favor of a class of physicians represented by the firm. The Court's thirty-page decision in David A. Westbrock, M.D., et al. v. Western Ohio Health Care Corporation overruled all four of the assignments of error of United Health Care (the successor to Western Ohio) and affirmed the trial court's decision in its entirety. FG&I filed the original complaint in 1993 on behalf of a class of physicians who had contracts with Western Ohio during the periods 1979 through 1983 and 1985 through 1987. The contracts at issue allowed Western Ohio to withhold a portion of the physicians' fees when necessary, among other things, to ensure Western Ohio's financial stability. Plaintiffs alleged that Western Ohio was obligated to return all withheld fees to the Physician Class when it was financially able to do so. To date, approximately $2.5 million in fees withheld in 1979 through 1982 and $6.0 million in fees withheld in 1984 through 1987 have not been returned to the Physician Class.
The case was tried to Judge Patrick Foley in May, 1996, by FG&I partners Paul Hallinan and Tom Kraemer. On September 9, 1998, Judge Foley entered judgment in favor of the Physician Class in the amount of $12,482,461, representing the unreturned physicians' fees, which Judge Foley determined should have been returned no later than October 1, 1992, and prejudgment interest from that date. Absent an attempt to overturn this appellate victory in the Supreme Court of Ohio, proceedings will occur in the Common Pleas Court for United Health Care's payment of the 1998 judgment to FG&I's clients, currently valued (including accumulated post judgment interest) in excess of $14.3 million.
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