The husband of “The View” host Sunny Hostin, along with 200 co-defendants accused of insurance fraud in a sweeping, $459 million lawsuit in New York, could find themselves locked up in court for years to come, according to legal experts.
Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Hostin, an orthopedic surgeon, is among dozens of doctors and medical professionals named in the federal lawsuit, which was filed last month by American Transit Insurance Co., a New York-based auto insurance provider that insures Uber, Lyft. , and taxi companies in the province. Specifically, Hostin is accused of receiving compensation for “operating and fraudulently billing” American Transit, according to the lawsuit.
It lists at least two of Hostin’s alleged patients who were treated in January 2023 following involvement in “low impact” collisions that caused only minor damage. Despite injuries “beyond soft tissue,” both underwent arthroscopic surgery, the lawsuit said.
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 told Fox News Digital was designed to have a negative impact on behavior. And one that risks subjecting defendants like Hostin to years of complicated court proceedings—and potentially costing them huge payouts as a result.
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“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin. (Screenshot/ABC)
That’s because RICO laws—passed in the 1970s as an effort to curtail the activity of mafias and other organized crime—allow plaintiffs to win “extreme damages,” awards that are three times the amount of actual, or compensatory, damages.
In American Transit’s case, that’s somewhere in the ballpark of $459 million or so— more than three times their compensatory damages, which stand at $153 million.
Intimidation factor, chilling effect
Often, these types of cases are pursued with a specific strategy in mind, said Michael Mears, an associate law professor at John Marshall Law School who specializes in criminal law and RICO cases.
“There’s a lot more going on with the application of the RICO statute than just getting damages,” Mears told Fox News Digital in an interview. “It changes behavior. It changes attitudes. It changes the way business is done sometimes.”
RICO civil lawsuits are sometimes used as a way to force people to stop certain behavior and oppressive practices. In the case involving Hostin, that includes the alleged routine overcharging of doctors and ambulance services, or the overcharging of patients on an unusual scale.
In the case of New York, for example, “you have doctors who really don’t want to be called criminals,” Mears said. “It’s just an allegation [in] A civil RICO statute can be very intimidating, and a very powerful tool” to stop unfair practices.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be a series of court actions for the defendants named in the American Transit lawsuit, including Hostin.
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Sunny Hostin talks on air in a segment on ‘The View.’ (Screenshot/ABC)
Legal experts told Fox News Digital that civil RICO cases in today’s world are a long game—often carrying a timeline of 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 handles RICO cases, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
In the American Transit case, the insurance provider accuses Hostin and dozens of other doctors of abusing New York’s no-fault law to illegally inflate or bill for unnecessary treatments and profit margins.
No-fault laws require companies like American Transit to cover health care expenses “reasonably incurred” as a result of injuries sustained by insured occupants. But the low burden of proof under no-fault laws also means they are at greater risk of being exploited by doctors.
American Transit alleges that Hostin and other defendants violated New York’s no-fault laws by charging “hundreds of millions” of dollars in fraudulent payments between 2009 and December 2024.
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“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin. (92Y via YouTube)
Complex situations, long timelines
Civil RICO cases are often lengthy, difficult cases for each person involved.
In fact, the 698-page lawsuit filed by American Transit is among the largest RICO lawsuits ever filed in New York—all without guaranteeing a settlement process for Hostin and the other defendants.
Courts “will look at the individual claims made against each defendant to establish all the elements of a RICO claim, and all the elements of RICO claims are very complex,” Grell said.
Many of the defendants—if not all—will try to move to dismiss the case before discovery begins, a process that alone can take more than a year. Often, there will be a number of related motions filed by defendants trying to get their motion to dismiss approved by the court, further adding to the time frame.
After the dismissal motions are resolved, the discovery process begins. This process can be long and complicated, as it involves each person named in the suit, and counsel for each defendant will try to make a case that their individual client does not satisfy the elements of a RICO charge.
“Like any other civil case, the RICO statute allows people to take money,” Mears said about the timing of RICO cases. “They allow the collection of documents. They allow the discovery of filing records.”
Ultimately, it’s a process that “opens up every avenue to find out what’s going on within an organization — whether it’s a doctor’s office, a hospital, a medical group,” he said, and allows plaintiffs to order discovery and collection of documents. individual name.
That can lead to the case dragging on for a long time.
“In other words, the discovery process [in RICO cases] it can be very scary,” Mears said. “It’s a long game.”
Sunny Hostin, meanwhile, weighed in on her husband’s career as a doctor in his role as host of “The View.”
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Recently, Hostin spoke about his work in a discussion about health insurance after the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson New York City.
“Doctors are suffering because of big corporations, doctors who want to do good like my husband,” Hostin said in the episode. She added that her husband, in his role as an orthopedic surgeon, “operates on someone without insurance and has to sue the health insurance companies to get paid for the job he was trained to do his whole life. “
Hostin’s lawyers previously denied all the allegations against him and described the filing as “a frivolous, baseless lawsuit by an almost bankrupt insurer,” according to the Daily Mail.
They did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the allegations or any expected timeline for the RICO prosecution.