Court Overturns Award to Fired HMO Physician

A state appellate court reversed an earlier decision in favor of an Orange County doctor who was fired by an HMO in 1991 for allegedly harassing and intimidating patients and staff.

Robert J. French, who worked for Cigna Healthplans of California in Laguna Hills and Irvine, sued Cigna in 1992 for wrongful termination, contending that the company dismissed him without the required peer review. A Superior Court jury in Orange County agreed, and awarded French nearly $7.7 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

But appellate Justice Thomas F. Crosby Jr. in Santa Ana reversed the verdict on Wednesday, saying that French admitted to the court that he was unfit for the job, and that the doctor should have first sought administrative remedies.

“It makes no sense that French should be awarded damages for losing a job he concedes he was not fit to hold,” Crosby wrote in his opinion.

What’s more, the physician should have exhausted the normal administrative methods to compel a peer review, rather than go through “the back door” of a lawsuit to challenge a termination “that was entirely justified,” he said.

Crosby said that Superior Court Judge William F. McDonald had left the trial jury little choice but to find for French by telling them Cigna had violated state policy when it failed to provide a peer review. He was joined in his decision by justices David G. Sills and Sheila P. Sonenshine.

*

French began working for the unit of Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp. in 1973. In 1990, he took a three-month stress disability leave after he was demoted from his position as chief of staff of the HMO’s Laguna Hills clinic. That action was precipitated by complaints by other health-care workers, who said the doctor improperly examined a female patient and made unwanted sexual advances toward a receptionist, Crosby’s opinion states.

After he returned to work, the complaints continued, and in 1991 he took another leave of absence, Crosby said. Four months later, the justice said, French was ordered back to work in Irvine, where he was warned that he’d be fired for any improper behavior. By November, more complaints were registered by patients about his “rude” manner that brought some to tears, Crosby said.

French was suspended, then fired.

G. Robert Hale, one of French’s attorneys, declined to comment. Another of the doctor’s lawyers, William J. Ingalsbe, did not return a phone call.

Jim Harris, a Cigna spokesman, said the company was “pleased with this decision. From the start, we believed we had acted appropriately and in the best interests of our health plan members.”

He said that any further action “is up to the plaintiffs.”