The husband of Host of “The View” Sunny Hostin, along with 200 co-defendants charged with insurance fraud in a massive $459 million New York lawsuit, could end up in court for years, legal experts say.
Emmanuel “Manny” Hostin, an orthopedic surgeon, is one of dozens of doctors and medical staff named in the federal lawsuit, which was filed last month by American Transit Insurance Co., a New York-based commercial auto insurance provider that insures Uber, Lyft and the state’s taxi companies. Hostin in particular is accused of receiving bribes by “performing surgery and fraudulently billing” American Transit, according to the lawsuit.
He cites at least two of Hostin’s patients who would have been treated in January 2023 following his involvement in “low impact” collisions that caused minimal damage. Although they suffered “only soft tissue injuries,” both underwent arthroscopic surgery, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, in the Eastern District of New York — a strategy that legal experts at Fox News Digital say is designed to have a deterrent effect on behavior. It’s also a situation that risks entangling defendants like Hostin in years of complex legal proceedings — and potentially saddling them with massive payouts as a result.
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Sunny Hostin, co-host of “The View.” (Screenshot/ABC)
Indeed, RICO laws – passed in the 1970s to try to crack down on mafia activity and other organized crimes – allow plaintiffs to obtain “treble damages,” damages triple the amount of actual damages. or compensatory.
In American Transit’s case, that’s about $459 million or more, three times more than their compensatory damages of $153 million.
Intimidation factor, deterrent effect
Often, these types of lawsuits are filed with a certain strategy in mind, said Michael Mears, an associate professor of law at John Marshall Law School who specializes in criminal law and RICO cases.
“Using the RICO statute involves much more than just recovering damages,” Mears told Fox News Digital in an interview. “It changes behaviors. It changes attitudes. It changes sometimes the way business is done.”
Civil RICO lawsuits are sometimes used as a way to force people or stop certain oppressive behaviors and practices. In Hostin’s case, this includes allegedly habitual overcharging by doctors and outpatient services, or extraordinary overcharging of patients.
In the case of New York, for example, “you have doctors who really don’t want to be called criminals,” Mears said. “Just the accusations alone [in] a civil RICO statute can be very intimidating and a very powerful tool” for stopping improper practices.
That’s not to say there won’t be a litany of legal activity ahead for the defendants named in the American Transit lawsuit, including Hostin.
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Sunny Hostin speaks on-air in a segment of “The VIew.” (Screenshot/ABC)
Legal experts told Fox News Digital that civil RICO cases in today’s world are a long game — often taking years, rather than months, to play out in court.
Plaintiffs in civil RICO cases are often insurance companies that accuse a group of people of fraud, Jeffrey Grell, an attorney who specializes in RICO litigation, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
In the American Transit lawsuit, the insurance company accuses Hostin and dozens of other doctors of abusing New York’s no-fault law to inflate or artificially charge for unnecessary medical treatments and profit from kickbacks.
No-fault laws require companies like American Transit to cover health care expenses “reasonably incurred” as a result of injuries suffered by insured occupants. But the low burden of proof under no-fault laws also means they are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by doctors.
American Transit alleges that Hostin and other defendants abused New York’s no-fault laws to charge “hundreds of millions” of dollars in fraudulent payments between 2009 and December 2024.
Sunny Hostin, co-host of “The View.” (92 years old via YouTube)
Complex cases, long delays
Civil RICO cases are often long and arduous matters for everyone involved.
In fact, the 698-page lawsuit filed by American Transit is one of the largest civil RICO cases ever filed in New York – virtually guaranteeing a lengthy resolution process for Hostin and the other defendants.
Courts “will look at the individual claims filed against each defendant to establish all the elements of a RICO claim, and all the elements of RICO claims are quite complicated,” Grell said.
Many, if not all, defendants will attempt to dismiss the case before pretrial proceedings begin, a pretrial process that alone can take more than a year. Often, there will be a multitude of related motions filed by defendants in an attempt to get their motion to dismiss granted by the court, further extending the delays.
Once the motions to dismiss are resolved, the discovery process begins. This process can be lengthy and complex because it involves each person named in the lawsuit, and each defendant’s attorney will attempt to argue that their client individually does not satisfy the elements of the RICO case.
“Like any other civil trial, the RICO statute allows people to file depositions,” Mears said of the time limit for RICO cases. “They allow the collection of documents. They allow the discovery of filling files.”
Ultimately, it’s a process that “opens up a whole avenue for uncovering what’s going on within the organization – whether it’s a doctor’s office, a hospital, “a group of doctors,” he said, and which allows plaintiffs to order the discovery and collection of documents from each named individual.
This can drag out the case even longer.
“In other words, the process of discovery [in RICO cases] can be very intimidating,” Mears said. “It’s a long game.”
Sunny Hostin, for her part, weighed in on her husband’s work as a doctor in her role as co-host of “The View.”
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Most recently, Hostin referenced his work during a discussion about health insurance following the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare in New York.
“Doctors are also suffering because of big corporations, doctors who want to do good like my husband,” Hostin said in the segment. She added that her husband, in his capacity as an orthopedic surgeon, “operates on someone even though he doesn’t have insurance and then has to sue health insurance companies to get paid for the work he did.” he’s been training all his life.” “
Hostin’s lawyers have previously denied all allegations against him and described the filing as a “blanket, scattered and baseless lawsuit from an insurance company on the brink of bankruptcy,” according to the Daily Mail .
They did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the allegations or any timeline in the RICO proceeding.
