Federal court lets Texas peer review ruling stand

Some doctors fear that the decision will chill peer review.

By Amy Lynn Sorrel, AMNews staff. May 22/29, 2006.

Although a federal judge knocked down a large portion of a multimillion-dollar verdict to a physician in an unlawful peer review case, he allowed the ruling to stand, which doctors say is significant because peer review cases are difficult to prove in court.

Nearly two years after a federal jury awarded Dallas cardiologist Lawrence R. Poliner, MD, $366 million in a defamation lawsuit, the court upheld a jury's findings that the hospital and its physician staff improperly used the peer review process to suspend the doctor's privileges.

The decision leaves the amount of damages up in the air, although the judge did not toss out the award entirely. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in March upheld the defamation claim against Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, which has $70 million in damages attached to it, as well as the possibility for another $90 million in punitive damages for emotional distress. But for now, the court has ordered mediation between the two parties to determine an appropriate monetary award.

The court affirmed the basis for the jury's decision that the hospital's doctors had violated medical staff bylaws, defamed the physician and interfered with his practice when it summarily suspended him without enough information to determine if he posed a danger to patients. "There is no doubt the jury awarded ... a tremendous amount of money in damages ... influenced by defendants' unwillingness to acknowledge their own wrongdoing," Judge Jorge A. Solis noted.