A Johnson County jury rejected the claim that the Kansas City area’s biggest radiology practice violated state antitrust laws but ordered it to pay $718,500 to a prominent radiologist whom it terminated.
The jury deliberated for more than 10 hours before reaching its verdict Friday night after a trial that lasted two weeks.
Mark E. Idstrom had sued his former employer, Alliance Radiology, and seven of its current and former board members, alleging he was fired without cause in 2012 and prevented from obtaining employment due to exclusive contracts Alliance had negotiated with 21 Kansas City-area hospitals.
Idstrom sought $2.5 million for violations of the Kansas Restraint of Trade Act (KRTA), breach of fiduciary duty and civil conspiracy. The jury found against him on his KRTA claim, awarded him $1 against each of the individual defendants on the breach-of-fiduciary duty claim and awarded him $718,500 on the civil conspiracy claim.
The damages represented about one-and-a-half times Idstrom’s annual pay before he was fired.
Michael F. Saunders, an attorney for Alliance Radiology, said Alliance planned to ask the judge to set aside the damage award.
“We don’t think that the claim made any sense, either from a legal standpoint or from an evidentiary standpoint,” Saunders said.
Brandon Boulware, an attorney for Idstrom, said the verdict left Idstrom as “a 64-year-old radiologist who still cannot do radiology work at any of Alliance’s 21 hospitals because of these exclusive contracts.”
“He’s in the same position he was before the trial except he’s got a $718,000 damage award,” Boulware said.
Alliance Radiology was formed more than 15 years ago, bringing together radiologists who had previously been with four separate practice groups. Idstrom alleged they combined in order to extract higher reimbursement rates from hospitals and insurance companies.
Although they now operate under the umbrella of Alliance, Idstrom claimed the groups still operate independently, with each assuming its own financial risks and booking its own profits. Each also has its own assigned turf to avoid the need to bid against one another, according to Idstrom.
In refusing to find the defendants liable under KRTA, the jury appeared to have rejected Idstrom’s antitrust claim. It’s not clear how that finding jibes with its finding of liability on the civil conspiracy claim.
Saunders said one of the defendants’ expert witnesses, a former antitrust director at the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, testified that “in his opinion, there was absolutely no violation of antitrust laws.”
“This jury took this case very seriously and they worked very hard,” Saunders said. “And they sifted through some very complicated evidence. If there’s an issue here, it’s certainly not with the jury.”
Dan Margolies, editor of the Heartland Health Monitor team, is based at KCUR.
