Cameron Knight

cknight@enquirer.com

An appeals court overturned part of a ruling by a Hamilton County judge, calling his opinion "remarkable," "brazen," and "shaky."

Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Ruehlman recently heard arguments by Judy Young and Cecil Young against UC Health, West Chester Medical Center, Christ Hospital and Dr. Abubakar Durrani.

Durrani, a Mason spine doctor, is accused of malpractice and fraudulently billing Medicare millions of dollars for unnecessary surgeries. He was found negligent in previous cases, but fled the country in 2013 and has not been located.

Ohio 1st District Court of Appeals Judge Pat DeWine wrote that Durrani's actions have left "his patients to pursue the hospitals where the surgeries took place."

Last October, West Chester Hospital and its parent company, UC Health, agreed to pay $4.1 million to settle the Medicare allegations with the federal government, Ohio and Kentucky, but admitted no wrongdoing.

The Youngs claimed that the medical statute of repose was unconstitutional. This law requires medical claims to be filed within four years of the act that allegedly caused injury.

They also argued that many of the claims against Christ Hospital and other defendants weren't medical claims at all, and were instead fraud or other types of claims not covered by the statute of repose.

Ruehlman denied a motion by the hospitals to dismiss the case. In Ruehlman's written opinion, he ruled that several Ohio statutes, including the statute of repose, were unconstitutional. The hospitals appealed.

In the first paragraph of DeWine's majority opinion, he explicitly states that the statute of repose is constitutional and has been reviewed by higher courts previously.

"The trial court had no authority to effectively overrule the Ohio Supreme Court," DeWine wrote later in the opinion. Citing a previous ruling, he stated that unless anarchy is to prevail, precedents set in higher courts must be followed by lower courts "no matter how misguided the judges of those courts may think it to be."

Regarding misclassifications of claims, DeWine wrote that the Youngs "dressed-up" up their claims as medical claims.

Judge Russell Mock concurred with the opinion, while Judge Pat Fischer only concurred in part. Fischer argued that the majority should have gone further, and struck down Ruehlman's opinion that Ohio's "peer-review statute" is unconstitutional. DeWine wrote for the majority that his court did not have jurisdiction over that matter.

This isn't the first time Ruehlman has been chastised by high courts.

In June, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a scathing opinion stating Ruehlman had no legal authority to “inject himself” into the collection of a multimillion-dollar settlement in Kentucky that noted attorney Stan Chesley was ordered to pay.

The high court said in the opinion that Ruehlman “has repeatedly acted to shield Chesley and his assets from creditors, despite a patent lack of jurisdiction.”

The court, in the 5-1 decision, overturned all of Ruehlman’s orders in the case.

In 2004, the Court of Appeals said he had bullied a woman into testifying against her live-in boyfriend after she changed her story about a domestic violence allegation.

The court called his behavior egregious after he told the woman, "Either he goes (to prison) or you go, what is it going to be? You got kids?"

Ruehlman running for re-election in November as a Republican. He has served on the court since 1987. In 2010, he ran unopposed. This year, he is facing off against Darlene Rogers.

DeWine and Fischer, also Republicans, will also be on the ballot in November in the race for the Ohio Supreme Court running for separate seats.