Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—D. Utah: Preliminary injunction denied in dispute over surgical privileges, (Feb 5, 2015)

By Jeffrey May, J.D.

A surgeon who filed an antitrust suit against the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center after his medical privileges were suspended was not entitled to a preliminary injunction postponing an upcoming hearing on the status of his temporarily reinstated privileges until the case was fully litigated. The federal district court in Salt Lake City denied the complaining surgeon's motion for a preliminary injunction because the requested relief was incongruent with the claims in the complaint and because the plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies and failed to establish the factors necessary to grant a preliminary injunction (Belnap v. Iasis Healthcare Corp., February 4, 2015, Nuffer, D.).

In his suit, the surgeon alleged that the medical center and others attempted to eliminate him from the market by suspending his privileges and not following through on the development of an abdominal treatment center that he was supposed to manage. In addition to the antitrust claim, he alleged claims based on breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and damage to his reputation.

In a January 27 order, the court stayed the antitrust cause of action as to the medical center and ordered that the physician and the medical center proceed to arbitration on the arbitrability of that claim. Because the remaining claims were outside the scope of the arbitration agreement in a contract between the medical center and the physician, the court denied the defendants' request to stay the litigation and compel arbitration with respect to the remaining claims.

In denying the preliminary injunction request, the court first explained that the plaintiff failed to establish a relationship between the injury claimed in the motion and the conduct asserted in the complaint. The upcoming hearing was tied to the surgeon’s application for reappointment; however, the complaint did not include any allegations about this application, which began more than a year after his privileges had been reinstated after the first “wrongful” suspension. Moreover, a preliminary injunction was not warranted because the plaintiff had not yet exhausted his administrative remedies. The court also noted that it was not certain that the plaintiff would suffer irreparable harm if an injunction did not issue, as he was performing surgeries at the defending medical center with “full active privileges.”

This is Case No. 2:14-cv-00086-DN.

Attorneys: Peter Stirba (Stirba PC) for LeGrand P. Belnap. Anne Johnson Palmer (Ropes & Gray LLP) and Francis M. Wikstrom (Parsons Behle & Latimer) for Iasis Healthcare Corp. and Salt Lake Regional Medical Center, L.P.

Companies: Iasis Healthcare Corp.; Salt Lake Regional Medical Center, L.P.

Cases: Antitrust UtahNews