The husband of Host of “Het Uitzicht”. Sunny Hostin, along with 200 co-defendants charged with insurance fraud in a sweeping $459 million lawsuit in New York, could spend years on trial, according to legal experts.
Emmanuel “Manny” Hostin, an orthopedic surgeon, is among dozens of doctors and medical staff mentioned in the federal lawsuit, which was filed last month by American Transit Insurance Co., a New York-based commercial auto insurance company that insures Uber, Lyft and taxi companies in the state. Hostin, in particular, is accused of receiving kickbacks by “conducting an operation and fraudulently billing” American Transit, according to the lawsuit.
At least two of Hostin’s patients are mentioned who were reportedly addressed in January 2023 after being involved in “low-impact” collisions that caused only minimal damage. Despite suffering “no more than soft tissue injuries,” 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 is designed to have a chilling effect on behavior. It is also one that risks entangling defendants like Hostin in years of complex legal proceedings – potentially saddling them with huge payouts as a result.
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Sunny Hostin is co-host of “The View”. (Screenshot/ABC)
That’s because the RICO laws — passed in the 1970s as an effort to crack down on mob activity and other organized crime — allow prosecutors to win “triple damages,” awards that are three times as high as actual or compensatory damages.
In the American Transit case, that is somewhere in the neighborhood of $459 million or more – three times as much as their compensatory damages, which is $153 million.
Intimidation factor, chilling effect
Often, these types of lawsuits are pursued with a specific strategy in mind, says Michael Mears, an associate professor of law at John Marshall Law School who specializes in criminal law and RICO cases.
“There is a lot more to using the RICO statute than just recovering damages,” Mears told Fox News Digital in an interview. “It changes behavior. It changes attitudes. It sometimes changes the way business is done.”
RICO civil lawsuits are sometimes used as a means to coerce people or stop certain behaviors and oppressive practices. In Hostin’s case, that includes allegedly overbilling physicians and outpatient services, or overcharging patients to an extraordinary degree.
In the New York case, for example, “You have doctors who really don’t want to be called criminals,” Mears said. “The allegations alone (in) a civil RICO statute can be very intimidating and be a very powerful tool” to stop objectionable practices.
That’s not to say there won’t be a litany of courtroom activities for defendants named in the American Transit lawsuit, including Hostin.
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Sunny Hostin speaks 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 with a timeline of years rather than months to be resolved in court.
Plaintiffs in civil RICO cases are often insurance companies accusing a group of people of fraud, Jeffrey Grell, an attorney specializing in RICO lawsuits, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
In the American Transit lawsuit, the insurer accuses Hostin and the dozens of other doctors of abusing New York law to artificially inflate or bill for unnecessary medical treatments and profiting from the kickbacks.
No-fail laws require companies like American Transit to cover health care costs “reasonably incurred” as a result of injuries sustained by insured passengers. But the low burden of proof under no-fault laws also means they are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by doctors.
American Transit alleges that Hostin and other defendants abused New York’s no-fault laws to charge “hundreds of millions” of dollars in fraudulent payments between 2009 and December 2024.
Sunny Hostin is co-host of “The View”. (92Y via YouTube)
Complex matters, long timelines
Civil RICO cases are often lengthy and difficult for each of the people involved.
In fact, the 698-page lawsuit filed by American Transit is one of the largest civil RICO lawsuits ever filed in New York — all but guaranteeing a lengthy resolution process for Hostin and other defendants.
Courts “are going to look at the individual claims brought against each defendant to determine all the elements of a RICO claim, and all the elements of RICO claims are quite complicated,” Grell said.
Many of the defendants – if not all – will attempt to dismiss the case before discovery begins, a preliminary process that alone can take more than a year. Often there will be a flurry of related motions filed by defendants in an attempt to have their motion to dismiss granted by the court, further adding to the drawn out time frame.
After the motions to dismiss have been resolved, the discovery process begins. This process can be lengthy and complex because it involves each person named in the lawsuit, and each defendant’s counsel will attempt to demonstrate that their client individually does not comply with the elements of the RICO case.
“Just like in any other civil lawsuit, the RICO statute allows people to make statements,” Mears said of the time frame for RICO cases. “They enable document collection. They enable discovery of data entry.”
Ultimately, it’s a process that “opens up a whole avenue of finding out what’s going on within the organization — whether it’s a doctor’s office, a hospital, a physician group,” he said, and that gives plaintiffs the opportunity to investigate and collection of documents to order from each individual mentioned.
This could lead to the case dragging on even longer.
“In other words, the discovery process (in RICO cases) can be very intimidating,” Mears said. “It’s a long game.”
For her part, Sunny Hostin has included her husband in his work as a doctor in her role as co-host of “The View.”
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Hostin recently referred to his work in a discussion about health insurance following the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare in New York City.
“Doctors also suffer from big corporations, doctors who want to do good just like my husband,” Hostin said in the segment. She added that her husband, in his capacity as an orthopedic surgeon, “operates on someone even though he or she has no insurance and then has to sue the health insurance companies to get paid for the work he or she has been trained to do all his life.” “
Hostin’s lawyers previously denied all allegations against him, describing the filing of a “generic, scattershot, meritless lawsuit by a nearly bankrupt insurance company,” according to the Daily Mail.
They did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the allegations or on any timeline expected in the RICO proceedings.
