A recent Law 360 story by Carolina Bolado, “Doctors’ Counsel Ask Courts to Divide Fees in $12M FCA Deal,” reports that Aronovitz Law asked a Florida federal court to help divide the attorneys' fees among counsel for whistleblowers whose suit against a Miami-area hospital for submitting false claims to federal health care programs for medically unnecessary cardiac procedures netted a $12 million settlement.

Aronovitz told the court that the firm and its co-counsel, Aronfeld Trial Lawyers PA, could not agree on how to divide the attorneys' fee award for their work representing Dr. James A. Burks and Dr. James D. Davenport in their False Claims Act suit against South Miami Hospital and Dr. John R. Dylewski over procedures he performed when he worked at the Baptist Health-owned hospital.  The firm said the court would have to resolve disputed issues of fact before the fee award could be divided among counsel in the case.

“Those disputed issues of fact cannot be adequately presented to the court for resolution without first conducting some limited discovery, and the record is not sufficiently clear to allow the court to resolve the dispute without such discovery or an evidentiary hearing,” Aronovitz said in the filing.

The firms represented Burks and Davenport, a vascular surgeon and a cardiologist, respectively, who worked at the hospital and claimed to have personal knowledge of Dylewski and the hospital performing a number of unnecessary cardiac procedures for the sole purpose of increasing the amount of reimbursements paid to the hospital and its doctors by Medicare and other federally funded programs.

They said that since at least 2007, thousands of mostly elderly patients treated by Dylewski with the consent of Baptist and South Miami Hospital have been subjected to "invasive, improper, unjustified, medically unnecessary, repetitive, high risk and costly” medical procedures undertaken to allegedly treat abnormal heart rhythms.

Davenport said he witnessed the Medicare fraud and improper surgical practices when he worked with Dylewski from 2006 to 2007 and while later serving as a doctor for Baptist Health and South Miami Hospital.  Burks said he witnessed “repeated and continuing instances” of improper medical and billing practices.

The hospital agreed in December to pay $12 million to settle the allegations.  Dylewski, who no longer works at the hospital, was not a party to the settlement.  Burks and Davenport will receive about $2.75 million in the deal.

The case is United States of America et al. v. Dylewski et al., case number 1:14-cv-22079, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.