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The Landmark case for workers’ compensation fraud involving the illegal manufacture and distribution of compounded pain creams to workers’ compensation patients plus 25 million dollars in kick-backs to physicians, was finally brought back to Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana yesterday, June 20th 2016. 

It has been over a year and a half since fraud-doctor defense attorney, Benjamin Gluck, first sent a writ of mandate to the court of appeals, which rejected it and prompted Gluck to send the writ all the way to the California Supreme Court.  Then the supreme court demanded that the court of appeal give it a review which, all-in-all, became a process from November 2014 to March 10^th 2016, the date the appeals court granted the writ. 

This decision wiped out the entire two indictments with the exception of Count 1 for Bruce Curnick, the former Vice President of Landmark Medical Management.  This detour suspended the progress of this case by over a year and a half.  Now the Orange County District Attorney has refiled the case as twelve separate filings or informations, filed on May 20^th 2016, not using a grand jury.  Bruce Curnick alone remains in the old indictment and is not included in any of the new filings.    

Four new doctors, plus a Sandra Garcia Martinez, plus Kareem Ahmed’s collections representative, Norma Reyna Garner, have been added as defendants to this case.  The doctors are: Quynam Nguyen, M.D., Faramarz “Fred” Khalili, Hitendra Hirachand Shah, M.D., and Bal Rajagopalan, M.D.

Kareem Ahmed, the CEO of Landmark Medical Management, sat in the back row of the main orchestra seats in the first court room, C-45, at a little after 9:00 am yesterday.  There are only two seats in that back row, and there he was in a very fine dark blue suit that appeared to be silk.  Judge Thomas Goethals came to the bench and immediately instructed all the defense lawyers to get together and make a decision as he had a jury trial going on and the jurors would be back at 9:30 am.

The attorneys all filed out and into the hallway and then came back promptly led by the pilot fish, Benjamin Gluck.  Gluck said “we’re ready” before his sea of suits.  Gluck appears to have cut his hair quite short and to have shaved his sparse beard off for this day. 

Shaddi Kamiabipour, the deputy district attorney prosecuting this case, began in addressing the court by expressing “as the court may know” the writ of mandate challenging Goethals' ruling against the defenses' demurrers in the indictment case had been won on appeal.  Judge Goethals half-laughed and answered with a touch of a chuckle that he was well aware of that fact. 

Goethals was gracious and considerate to Gluck, who stood there with his school of defense attorneys behind him, in light of the fact Gluck had beat out Goethals' rulings which denied Gluck’s demurrers and 995 motions.  Judge Goethals told another defense attorney, who spoke up and asked him to conduct all the arraignments, that they had to go to court room C-55.  “You’re in a bureaucracy, don’t you know that?” Goethals quipped.   

The court told prosecutor Shaddi Kamiabipour that he had no objection to a transfer of the bails to the new case--it would be up to the surety companies--and that her motion to dismiss would be granted.

Judge Thomas Goethals then closed proceedings on this case and the defendants and counsels all shuffled over to court room C-55 with Judge Andre Manssourian.  All of the arraignments were done throughout the rest of the morning and continued into the afternoon. 

That court room was oppressively hot, most likely due to the outside heat wave.  Many attorneys fanned themselves with their documents. 

Proceedings on this case will continue on July 19^th.   The Preliminary Hearing was set to begin on September 2^nd 2016.

lonce@adjustercom.com