Straight answers scare in HPN trial

Every so often in a trial where a jury has found that a company’s behavior has put people in harm’s way, you can find exchanges between an attorney and a key witness that seem to capture that company’s embarrassment and shame.

And so it was when Jon Bunker, the former president of the Health Plan of Nevada, was questioned by Robert Eglet, one of the lawyers for three people who were awarded $524 million in damages last week. An eight-member Clark County jury found that HPN had acted in bad faith in its obligation to provide insurance coverage to patients.

Two plaintiffs, Helen Meyer, 76, and Bonnie Brunson, 70, contracted hepatitis C at a facility operated by Dr. Dipak Desai, an HPN-approved physician who had long bragged to physicians throughout Southern Nevada that he did colonoscopies in three or four minutes when a safe procedure takes 30 minutes or more. Evidence showed HPN contracted with Desai even though a vice president knew that Southwest Medical Associates’ staff wanted Desai’s resignation after he pulled a scope out of a patient’s rectum so fast that feces were flung onto the floor and ceiling.

By the time Bunker was questioned on the stand about how he profited from HPN and about how doctors were hired Eglet and his colleague, Will Kemp, seemingly had elicited enough evidence to convince jurors HPN cared more about profits than safety.

One physician had already said HPN hired Desai even though he told the insurer Desai missed a fatal tumor by performing a colonoscopy on a local doctor’s mother-in-law so fast that he was done before the doctor, who dropped her off, finished parking at the surgery center.

And one doctor testified that HPN dropped Desai, the central figure in the 2008 hepatitis outbreak, from its network of doctors in 1992 because of quality concerns, only to reinstate him five years later because of his low-price bid.

Bunker’s testimony could have been found positive only by people who are proud of men who can never give a straight answer.

It appears clear that Bunker’s evasiveness didn’t persuade jurors to find HPN’s “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” defense of hiring Desai, who’s scheduled to go trial for murder soon, worthy of extensive consideration. They deliberated for only four hours after a two-month trial.

“Never once,” Eglet began with Bunker, “did you say that you felt it was a priority or it was a concern of Health Plan of Nevada that they hire superior-quality doctors. You never said that in your deposition, did you sir?”