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Home > Weight Loss News > Outspoken Diet Drug Plaintiffs’ Advocates Join Motion By Class Counsel To Address Rampant Fraud
Outspoken Diet Drug Plaintiffs’ Advocates Join Motion By Class Counsel To Address Rampant Fraud
New York (PRWEB) October 17, 2005 -- Outspoken plaintiffs’ advocates, attorneys Napoli Kaiser Bern & Associates, LLP have added their voices to a recent motion filed in the National Diet Drug Multi-District Litigation (MDL-1203) before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by Class Counsel. Class Counsel’s motion alleges widespread fraud and anti-claimant bias by the cardiologists who designed and administered the AHP Settlement Trust claims screening and audit programs.
“What is most notable about Class Counsel’s motion,” says firm Senior Partner Marc Jay Bern, “is that it substantively echoes allegations we initially made almost a year ago in our motion opposing the Trust’s proposed new auditor training program, and for the same reasons.”
Earlier this month, ten months after the Napoli Kaiser Bern office opposed the proposed new auditor training rules, Class Counsel filed its “Disclosures and Request for Instructions With Respect To The Integrity Of The Audit System.” That motion set forth the widespread instances of alleged fraud by Trust expert Dr. Joseph Kisslo, including such purported wrongdoing as Dr. Kisslo signing his name to boilerplate reports denying benefits when he had never reviewed the claimants’ echocardiogram tapes, and instances where Dr. Kisslo is alleged to have arranged to have other Trust auditors pressured by himself or Dr. John Dent, another leading Trust expert, to alter their findings and thus deny claimants’ benefits.
In response, the Napoli Kaiser Bern office has filed its “Motion for Joinder And Cross Motion For Removal And Disqualification Of Dr. Joseph Kisslo And Dr. John Dent From Involvement With The Trust And Audits Of Claims Under The National Class Action Settlement Agreement With American Home Products, Inc.” This motion not only joins in the Class Counsel motion for Dr. Kisslo’s removal, but goes several steps beyond, arguing that Dr. John Dent and each of the auditors who was improperly pressured by Drs. Kisslo and Dent should also be excluded from Trust activities, and that all of the claims denied as a result of these two cardiologists’ involvement in the audit procedure should be reopened and re-audited to assure that the claimants’ rights have not been improperly denied as a result of any anti-claimant bias by Dr. Kisslo and Dr. Dent.
In December of 2004, the Napoli Kaiser Bern firm opposed the “AHP Settlement Trust’s Motion for Approval of Revised Audit Rules and Enhanced Auditor Training,” arguing that the underlying premise for the proposed new rules, i.e., allegations by Dr. Kisslo of widespread fraud by plaintiffs’ attorneys and physicians, had no factual support. In their motion, the Napoli firm cited repeated instances where Dr. Kisslo had overruled the findings by Trust auditors in favor of claimants, and argued:
In each of these examples, Dr. Kisslo criticized the claimant’s attesting physician’s findings, ignoring the Trust’s auditing cardiologist’s findings; in each case, using similar language for all criticisms and making no specific measurements of his own. Each of the class members’ attesting/diagnosing physicians are Board Certified, highly qualified cardiologists as is demonstrated by their curricula vitae. Furthermore, Dr. Kisslo not only disregards each of the class members’ physicians’ opinions as “not medically reasonable”, but by doing so, utterly dismisses without specific cause the AHP Trust’s auditing cardiologists concurrences with each diagnosis. Dr. Kisslo’s findings are substantiated only by his own opinion of what is medically reasonable; there is neither legal nor medical support for his wholesale dismissal of the attesting and auditing physicians’ opinions. As such, the Kisslo audits are no more medically reasonable – and, if anything, have less evidentiary support -- than the valid diagnoses of the attesting doctors and the Trust’s auditing cardiologists.
“It is gratifying, after more than three years of the AHP Trust’s allegations that claimants, their attorneys and their physicians across the country have routinely filed fraudulent claims, to learn that Class Counsel has seen the light and taken steps to support the claimants,” said Bern, “but more importantly, it is nice to finally feel that we and our clients have been vindicated by Class Counsel’s disclosures in this battle we have been fighting for so long.”
About Napoli, Kaiser & Bern
Napoli, Kaiser & Bern, LLP is a law firm experienced in prosecuting personal injury actions on behalf of its clients. The firm’s litigation practice is focused on mass tort, medical malpractice, products liability, and negligence actions. Their office has been instrumental in the development of new law in the area of personal injury law and consumer rights. Napoli, Kaiser & Bern has law offices in New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Oklahoma.
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