CAMARILLO : Lawsuit on Hospital Merger Dismissed

A Ventura County Superior Court judge on Wednesday dismissed the Camarillo Health Care District’s last legal complaints against Pleasant Valley Hospital, but the judge gave the district 30 days to amend its suit.

In a decision that confirmed a tentative ruling issued Tuesday, Judge Frederick Jones dismissed the district’s suit against Pleasant Valley Hospital and its directors over the hospital’s Feb. 18 consolidation with St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard.

Jones agreed with the hospital’s argument that the taxpayer-funded health care district has no legal standing to pursue its claims against hospital officials. The district asserted, among other things, that Pleasant Valley Hospital directors breached their fiduciary duties by agreeing to the merger.

Hospital officials had argued that only corporation shareholders can bring such a lawsuit against a board of directors, an attorney for Pleasant Valley Hospital said.

The health care district built and owned Pleasant Valley Hospital until spinning the hospital off into a nonprofit corporation in 1983.

Dennis A. Kendig, an attorney for the district, said district officials will resubmit the lawsuit within 30 days, although he could not specify how they would reshape their complaints to satisfy Jones.

Pleasant Valley Hospital attorney Susan Hoffman said the health care district will have to find an entirely new basis for its lawsuit.

“They’ve basically got to start from scratch,” she said. “Everything they’ve done so far has been wasted.”