#anne-christine massullo

[decolonize-the-everything]

"In 2014, when a federal court judge ruled that California’s administration of the death penalty was unconstitutional, Harris appealed the decision as state attorney general, arguing that it was “not supported by the law.”

Harris later said that she was obligated to defend capital punishment as the legal representative of the state. Many have pointed out that she was happy not to defend a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that voters passed in Proposition 8 when it was challenged a year earlier. Harris’ response: She was merely reflecting the position of her client, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration.

She also explained that the judge’s ruling, which held that the long delays between sentencing and execution in California amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment,” could be used to justify speeding up the state’s system of capital punishment" Calmatters

Her saying the wait times for death row should be shorter when her police are wrongfully convicting people is beyond simply justifying the death penalty and beyond inhumane.

But let's talk about:

That was 5 years ago. the children on this website had a better idea of gender and could probably school her Right Now. In 5 minutes. Literally what is her excuse, she's old enough to have grown up watching the trans and queer rights movements. Like??? Hello??

Her response:

I was, as you are rightly pointing out, the attorney general of California for two terms and I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent and I couldn’t fire my clients, and there are unfortunately situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs,” Harris said.

[...] Harris said she takes responsibility for the litigation approach of her office because she was responsible as California attorney general. “But the bottom line is the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did,” Harris said.

Fine okay. Whatever... Right?

[...]But a series of briefs signed by Harris during her tenure as California attorney general made the opposite case. In one brief dated April 10, 2015, Harris and other state attorneys dismiss the importance of gender reassignment surgery in seeking to appeal a court order granting the procedure to transgender inmate Michelle-Lael Norsworthy. “Norsworthy has been treated for gender dysphoria for over 20 years, and there is no indication that her condition has somehow worsened to the point where she must obtain sex-reassignment surgery now rather than waiting until this case produces a final judgment on the merits,” the brief says.

?????!??!??!!!

Kamala is a law enforcement agent first and foremost. Then she is a politician.

She is NOT the girlboss queer ally that's gonna save everyone

If Republicans push through project 2025 legislation, you think this bootlicker nerd is gonna disobey the laws they put through? You think your cool girlboss memes will stop her from throwing you in one of her super progressive prison cells?

"I was just doing my job" was her excuse then just like it's the excuse of every cop who violates someone's rights. And that won't change. For her the system is always right, even when she knows it isn't.

Which in a lot ways makes her worse imo. She knows its fucked and she still signed up to do it anyway. Then lied & pretended to regret it.

“I never had a sense she was forward thinking or reforming,” said John Raphling, a bail reform advocate and senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who faced off against Harris’s state Justice Department as a criminal defense attorney.

“Bail reform is a trendy issue, and a lot of politicians are jumping on it and saying this is unfair. I don’t have any evidence that Harris was seeing that unfairness back when she was attorney general — but to her credit, we evolve, we learn, we see things.”

Dude said "maybe she grew up idk"

[...]Her office defended wrongful convictions, fighting to keep behind bars those who judges determined should go free. She refused to take a position on a pair of sentencing reform ballot measures, arguing she must remain neutral because her office was responsible for preparing ballot text.

[...]In response to critics who’ve pushed her to use her power in the courts to usher in change, she told The New York Times in 2016, “I have a client, I don’t get to choose my client.” APNews

So she's gonna do whatever the fuck the people paying her are telling her to and she made it very clear that her client was very much Not the people she was wrongfully incarcerating and trying to speedrun through death row.

And in that note: you may have heard about all her wrongful incarcerations. You may have seen liberals who "did their research" and found out it was "only 45" or some number like that

Ahahaha

....propaganda.

This is where that comes from.

One of Harris’s top deputies had emailed a colleague that a crime lab technician had become “increasingly UNDEPENDABLE for testimony.” Weeks later, the technician allegedly took home cocaine from the lab, possibly tainting evidence and raising concerns about hundreds of cases. Neither Harris nor the prosecutors working for her had informed defense attorneys of the problems — despite rules requiring such disclosure. Harris “failed to disclose information that clearly should have been disclosed,” Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo wrote in a scathing decision in May 2010. At first, Harris fought back. She blamed the police for failing to inform defense lawyers.

She blamed the cops LMAO

She estimated that only about 20 cases initially would be affected. And her office accused the judge of bias because Massullo’s husband was a defense lawyer.

But the turmoil increased. With the local criminal-justice system at risk of devolving into chaos, Harris took the extraordinary step of dismissing about 1,000 drug-related cases, including many in which convictions had been obtained and sentences were being served. WP

This mf had no idea what was going on cuz she was a shitty DA and panicked when being held accountable. Don't give her credit for that like it's a good thing.

The 20-50 number you're hearing from people who "fact-checked" are spreading misinfo and misleading propaganda. It was at least that many cases and at most it was so much that Kamala would rather overturn like a thousand of them.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Another good article with sources linked through out, written by Lara Bazelon; law professor and the former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles:

In conclusion:

ACAB includes "Top Cop" & former D.A Kamala Harris

[beardedmrbean]

The Los Angeles Innocence Project has taken up the notorious case of convicted wife killer Scott Peterson in new court filings, ABC News was first to report on Thursday. The group is seeking new evidence from the original trial.

Laci Peterson, who was 27 years old and eight months pregnant, disappeared on Christmas Eve in 2002. Her body was found in San Francisco Bay in April 2003.

Scott Peterson, 51, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife and second-degree murder in the death of their unborn son. He was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to death in 2005. He was later sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Attorneys with the LA Innocence Project claimed that Scott Peterson's state and federal constitutional rights were violated, including a "claim of actual innocence that is supported by newly discovered evidence," according to the court filings.

"New evidence now supports Mr. Peterson's longstanding claim of innocence and raises many questions into who abducted and killed Laci and Conner Peterson," the filings state.

His attorneys are seeking dozens of items they say they could not locate after reviewing the trial files from his prior counsel "after a thorough search," according to the filings. The items include evidence from the investigations into a December 2002 burglary of a home across the street from the Petersons' in Modesto in Stanislaus County, Laci Peterson's missing Croton watch, and a van fire in the Airport District on Dec. 25, 2002, according to the filings. They are also seeking documents from interviews with several witnesses.

Paula Mitchell, the director of the LA Innocence Project, said she found "deficiencies" while reviewing the discovery of Scott Peterson's case and sent a letter to Stanislaus County District Attorney Jeff Laugero on Nov. 14, 2023, "seeking informal production of numerous specific items of post-conviction discovery," according to a declaration included in the filings.

The letter "includes private identifying information concerning numerous citizens, potential material witnesses, and possible suspects -- as well as sensitive investigative leads relating to Mr. Peterson's claim of innocence-information that was referenced throughout various police reports, tip sheets, and other investigative materials from both the prosecution and the defense that I reviewed," she said in her declaration.

Mitchell also said during her investigation, she has come across "numerous witnesses" who have expressed hesitation or "outright unwillingness" to provide information due to the high-profile nature of the case.

Scott Peterson, who pleaded not guilty, has maintained his innocence and claimed he received an unfair trial based on possible jury misconduct. His lawyers have previously claimed that a woman, known as Juror 7, had not disclosed involvement in other legal proceedings.

In 2020, the California Supreme Court overturned Scott Peterson's death sentence, citing that his jury was improperly screened for bias against the death penalty, according to court documents.

He was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in December 2021 and moved off death row in October 2022.

In December 2022, Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo denied Scott Peterson "relief" in his appeal based on stealth juror accusations.

Scott Peterson's attorney, Pat Harris, said in a statement to ABC News on Thursday that they are "thrilled to have the incredibly skilled attorneys at the LA Innocence project and their expertise becoming involved in the efforts to prove Scott's innocence."

The LA Innocence Project -- which provides pro bono legal services to people incarcerated in Central and Southern California who may have been wrongfully convicted -- said in a statement later on Thursday that it is representing Scott Peterson and "investigating his claim of actual innocence."

"We have no further comment at this time," the organization said.

Mike Belmessieri, who served as a juror in Scott Peterson's trial, told ABC News on Thursday that there isn't a day that goes by where he hasn't thought about the case. He said he supports the LA Innocence Project's review of the case.

"If they think they're going to find something different, that sheds light on something new, I fully support it," Belmessieri said.

[wikifoxnews]

Who is Scott Peterson ( Murdered his wife and unborn child in 2002 ) Wiki, Bio, Age, Crime, Arrest, Incident details, Investigations and More Facts

Scott Peterson Biography                                        Scott Peterson Wiki

A man convicted of murdering his wife and unborn child in 2002 will not get a new trial, a judge ruled on Tuesday.

Scott Peterson will remain behind bars for the rest of his life after his request for a new trial was denied on the grounds that his conviction was compromised by a biased jury. He was convicted in 2004. Judge Anne-Christine Massullo found that the juror in question had not acted out of tort but out of emotions aroused by the proceedings. Peterson's attorney called the verdict "disappointing" in a statement to Fox News Digital. "It is only in the last few months that we have received new information that will prove that Scott Peterson did not kill his wife, Laci. And we will continue to move forward until he is freed." he declared. Regarding the verdict, the judge admits that juror #7 committed wrongdoing, but justifies this wrongdoing by writing that her past, her conflicted relationship with her boyfriend and her frequent memory lapses are all apologies for his wrongdoing." are. We respectfully disagree. Scott Peterson’s murder convictions stand. Judge rejects juror misconduct claim https://t.co/VVXkD0SbJQ — The Daily Democrat (@woodlandnews) December 20, 2022 Peterson's attorneys alleged that Richelle Nice was actively biased against Peterson and lied on her jury's questionnaire in order to gain access to the trial. However, prosecutors argued that he simply made mistakes in answering some of the 163 questions in the 23-page document. “He is contradictory in his answers,” prosecutor David Harris told the court. "But being wrong doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong or that you're a liar. Maybe she's not very good at filling out forms." Nice said she had no bias against Peterson until she heard the evidence against him at trial. Laci disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002 at the age of 27. She was eight months pregnant with the couple's child and they had been married for five years. A few days after her disappearance, her mutilated body washed up on the shores of San Francisco Bay. Prosecutors said Peterson wanted to escape married life and didn't want to take on the responsibility of becoming a father, so he allegedly killed the couple and threw them off his boat. They said he killed her in her home, then threw her body - and that of the baby she was carrying - into the water. Peterson was originally sentenced to death, but the sentence was overturned in November 2020. He has always maintained his innocence. Some of his relatives, like his brother's wife, support him. One said in November when his sentence was overturned: "We still need justice for Laci, Connor and Scott." "We don't have justice for Laci if Scott is on death row because Scott is innocent." But his sister called him in an interview with Dr. Oz a "sociopath" in 2021. "I don't know why he did that. Laci was the sweetest, kindest person, so I just don't get it. "We miss him all the time. We have been deprived of his presence. "His upbringing...I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I'm not a doctor, but I believe in sociopathy and I believe he's a sociopath," she said. Read the full article

[45oldschool-blog]

Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo stopped short of granting a request by more than 40 drug defendants that their cases be dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct, saying that decision must be left up to the judges hearing their cases

[hbclife]

Scott Peterson lawyer can't shake juror testimony over trial

Scott Peterson lawyer can’t shake juror testimony over trial

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Lawyers trying to overturn Scott Peterson’s conviction in the sordid slaying of his pregnant wife 20 years ago completed their questioning Monday without shaking a former juror from her crucial testimony that she acted properly before and during his 2004 trial. They must first prove to California Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo that juror Richelle Nice lied…

[lakeconews]

Final approval given to $575 million settlement with Sutter Health resolving allegations of anticompetitive practices

On Friday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta lauded Judge Anne-Christine Massullo’s final approval of a landmark $575 million settlement with Sutter Health.

[letsjanukhan]

Scott Peterson, convicted of killing pregnant wife, is one step closer in push for new trial

Scott Peterson, convicted of killing pregnant wife, is one step closer in push for new trial

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California judge said Wednesday that she anticipates a two-week hearing early next year before she decides if Scott Peterson deserves a new trial in the 2002 death of his pregnant wife. That’s more than a year after the California Supreme Court ordered Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo to consider if juror misconduct was so significant that it denied him a fair…

[politicalbombshow]

“Judge Overturns SF School Board Decision To Cover Up Controversial Mural” – Reason.com

“Judge Overturns SF School Board Decision To Cover Up Controversial Mural” – Reason.com

CBS San Francisco reports: A Superior Court judge ruled Monday to overturn the San Francisco Unified School District’s decision to remove a controversial mural from a local high school. Judge Anne-Christine Massullo sided with the alumni association of George Washington High School, who sued the SFUSD’s Board of Directors back in 2019 over its decision to cover up the 1936 mural by Victor…

[hsj-chronicle]

DA won't seek death even if Scott Peterson gets new trial California prosecutors said Tuesday that they won't again seek the death penalty against Scott Peterson in the 2002 slaying of his pregnant wife even if he is granted a new trial based on juror misconduct. But even that declaration wasn't enough to entirely take a death sentence off the table, Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said. “Laws change, district attorneys change,” she said. “I want to make sure that we do this right.” Massullo is considering when to resentence Peterson to life without parole after Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager said in a court filing Friday that she would not seek to retry the death penalty portion of the case after it was overturned by the state Supreme Court in August. “From the legal point of view — I hate using this term — it’s a done deal,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Dave Harris told the judge during what was otherwise an unresolved procedural hearing over who will represent Peterson. "He's no longer eligible to be housed on death row. He’s not going to be subjected to the death penalty.” See more: https://ift.tt/3g8GEWH #deathpenalty #SuperiorCourt — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/3ppuEnY

[dinafbrownil]

Citing COVID, Sutter Pushes To Revisit Landmark Antitrust Settlement

Six months after agreeing to a $575 million settlement in a closely watched antitrust case filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Sutter Health has yet to pay a single dollar, and no operational changes have gone into effect. The nonprofit health care giant was accused of using its market dominance in Northern California to illegally drive up prices.

Late last week, lawyers for Sutter filed a motion requesting that San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo delay approval of the settlement for an additional 90 days, due to “catastrophic” losses stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Massullo originally was scheduled to rule on the agreement in February, but in April granted an earlier request from Sutter for a 60-day delay in the proceedings.

In court documents supporting its request, Sutter argues the pandemic has upended the financial landscape for hospitals and made numerous aspects of the agreement untenable. Last month, Sutter reported an operating loss of $404 million through April, citing declining patient revenue and expenses resulting from the pandemic. System officials said that loss took into account the more than $200 million the system received in COVID-19 relief funds from the federal government via the CARES Act.

“We’re in a crisis situation,” David C. Kiernan, a lawyer representing Sutter, told Massullo during a settlement conference earlier this month. “There are certain provisions that, if they went into effect today, would interfere with Sutter’s ability to provide coordinated and integrated care to patients in California.”

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The settlement, announced in December, marked a dramatic turn in a long-running legal battle initiated in 2014 as a class-action lawsuit filed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union & Employers Benefit Trust, representing employers, unions and local governments whose workers use Sutter services. Becerra’s office joined the case in 2018.

Sutter has 24 hospitals, 34 surgery centers and 5,500 physicians across Northern California, with $13 billion in operating revenue in 2019. Among other allegations, the state’s lawsuit argued Sutter has aggressively bought up hospitals and physician practices throughout the Bay Area and Northern California, and exploited that market dominance for profit.

Health care costs in Northern California, where Sutter is dominant, are 20% to 30% higher than in Southern California, even after adjusting for cost of living, according to a 2018 study from the Nicholas C. Petris Center at the University of California-Berkeley that was cited in the complaint.

In agreeing to the settlement, Sutter did not admit wrongdoing. Throughout the proceedings, it has maintained that its integrated health system offers tangible benefits for patients, including affordable rates and consistent high-quality care.

Still, under terms of the settlement, Sutter agreed to end a host of practices that Becerra alleged unfairly stifled competition. Among other conditions, the settlement requires Sutter to limit what it charges patients for out-of-network services and increase transparency by allowing insurers and employers to give patients pricing information.

Sutter Health spokesperson Amy Thoma Tan, in a statement to KHN, said the health care system “has not objected to any aspect of the settlement” but is asking whether the settlement approval process should be deferred, “given the extreme disruption to the health care industry caused by COVID-19 and the potential for COVID-19 to materially impact certain settlement terms.”

In the court papers filed last week, Sutter’s attorneys went further, arguing that the settlement “may no longer make sense in its current form and could jeopardize Sutter’s ability to continue providing care.

“In this regard, Plaintiffs’ statement that they will not reassess even a single provision of a proposed injunction negotiated prior to COVID-19 is troublesome because it ignores the potentially harmful consequences of railroading the settlement through to approval in such an uncertain time,” they continued.

The court filing notes some specific settlement terms Sutter now considers problematic. Among them is a provision that calls for Sutter to end its all-or-nothing contracting deals with payers, which demanded that an insurer that wanted to include any one of the Sutter hospitals or clinics in its network must include all of them. Also cited is a provision that would limit the size of rate increases. Sutter says in the filing that it now may need to increase prices more than expected to pay for personal protective equipment and other unanticipated costs resulting from the pandemic.

In its filing, Sutter does not specifically object to the $575 million settlement amount. But Jaime King, an associate dean at UC Hastings College of the Law who has followed the case, said the request for a delay could be a tactical strategy to support such a move.

“The longer they can delay, the more they can show they have significant losses from COVID-19, which allows them to plead for a lower settlement,” King said.

While Becerra’s office has acknowledged the difficult circumstances that the pandemic has created for California hospitals, state lawyers said the settlement is binding and should not be delayed further.

“The plaintiffs are not going to renegotiate the settlement,” Emilio Varanini, a lawyer from Becerra’s office, told Massullo last month. “It’s even more in the public interest in an era of COVID-19 that COVID-19 not be an excuse to allow anticompetitive acts that will hurt consumers.”

Richard Grossman, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, echoed that sentiment. “Every hospital system in California is required to abide by California’s antitrust statutes, and they are all required to abide by the rules of competition that are prescribed by our legislature,” Grossman told KHN. “Sutter does not get an exception to that because there is a pandemic.”

Sutter has earned an average 43% annual profit margin over the past decade from medical treatments paid for by commercial insurers, like that provided by the plaintiff companies, according to a recent analysis by Glenn Melnick, a health care economist at the University of Southern California. “Google and Apple would be jealous of those profit margins!” Melnick said.

Without a settlement in place, critics said, Sutter can continue to employ the negotiating tactics that the attorney general called anticompetitive. Some noted, with irony, that the more than $200 million in relief funds Sutter received from the federal CARES Act was based on a formula that awarded funds according to a hospital’s prior-year revenues — meaning Sutter was compensated for a pricing system the attorney general argued was artificially inflated.

“I’d be curious if they’re trying to get in their last licks on using these types of tactics to inflate prices in one last round of negotiations with insurers and other payers,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/citing-covid-sutter-pushes-to-alter-landmark-antitrust-settlement/

[thewebofslime]

While district attorney for San Francisco, Kamala Harris withheld evidence that could have exonerated defendants on multiple occasions, in violation of a key due process ruling by the Supreme Court. Between 2004 and 2010, Harris’s office failed to inform defense attorneys about criminal and professional misconduct records that raised questions about the credibility of government witnesses. The lapses led to the dismissal of nearly 1,000 cases and a scathing 2010 ruling by a Superior Court judge that accused Harris’ office of breaching due process rights. Legal scholars told the Washington Examiner that Harris’ office appeared to have violated the Supreme Court’s 1963 Brady v. Maryland decision. The ruling held that prosecutors must turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. There is a “clear causal link between Brady violations and wrongful conviction” said Craig Trainor, a New York attorney who specializes in due process cases. “The reasons for failure to disclose exculpatory evidence range from bad faith to inexperience to excessive caseloads to a tunnel vision to get the ‘guilty defendant’ at all costs to rank politics, as we see in Kamala Harris’ case,” he said. Jason Kreag, a law professor at the University of Arizona and a former staffer at the Innocence Project, said Brady is also crucial because it “is designed to promote fairness in our system.” Kreag said this was particularly true in Harris’ case. “There is no doubt that the prosecutor's case is impeached when it is built on information from people who have credibility problems, as was the case here. When that happens, prosecutors owe a duty to disclose to the defense things that can be used to impeach the state’s case. That was a failure here.” He said prosecutors can face disciplinary action or disbarment for Brady violations, but such repercussions are rare. In December 2009, Deborah Madden, a long-time technician at the San Francisco Police Department crime lab who often testified as a trial witness for the district attorney’s office, was accused of stealing cocaine from the unit. This was not her first brush with the law, according to court records. Madden had been arrested for a domestic violence incident at her home in 2007. She was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and later found guilty of misdemeanor domestic violence charges. The police department opened its own disciplinary proceedings for Madden after the arrest. Police officials also realized her record might have to be disclosed to defendants: Her official file included a Post-it labeled “Brady Implications.” Top officials in Harris' office were aware of other problems with Madden. On Nov. 19, 2009, an assistant district attorney emailed Harris’ deputy Russ Giuntini and informed him that Madden seemed to be trying to sabotage the work of the crime lab. Madden was “increasingly UNDEPENDABLE for testimony,” said the email. “The problem with Deborah Madden does not appear to be isolated … anecdotally I am told Debbie is unhappy and strategically picks days and times to be sick which have the greatest impact on lab work.” After Madden’s drug theft went public, dozens of defendants sought to have their convictions vacated, arguing that the police and district attorney violated their due process rights by withholding material information about Madden. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo appeared to agree. In a April 2010 ruling, she said Harris’ office violated Brady policy. “The District Attorney failed to disclose information that clearly should have been disclosed,” wrote Massullo. When the judge asked the district attorney’s office for its policy on handling Brady disclosures, she was told the DA had no such system in place. “Failure to implement any type of procedure is a violation of [Supreme Court rulings] and California’s statutory discovery obligations in criminal cases,” wrote the judge. The controversy unearthed other cases where Harris’ office had withheld important information on government witnesses. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Harris’ office had compiled a list of over 100 law enforcement officials with criminal or misconduct issues but objected to sharing this information with defense attorneys without a court order. One toxicologist who worked on drunk driving cases, Ann-Marie Gordon, had been rebuked by a Washington state court for engaging in professional “fraud” while working at a local crime lab in 2007, according to the Chronicle. Gordon started working in San Francisco in 2007. Harris’s office did not disclose her background to defense attorneys until the spring of 2010. Harris’ office was informed of other inadequacies at the police crime lab that it declined to make public. In 2007, Harris hired veteran forensics expert Rockne Harmon as a DNA consultant, paying him $140,000, according to a copy of the contract. As part of his work, Harmon wrote a lengthy memo to top officials in the district attorney’s office that raised concerns about the reliability of the crime lab’s DNA testing unit in April 2010, according to San Francisco Weekly. After the Madden scandal broke, Harris insisted she never saw the memo. Her office also declined to make the document public. Harmon called for the DA to release the memo, saying it was important to understand the scope of the problems at the crime lab. “I'm not pleased that the full story — the full, true story — is still not out there,” Harmon said. “It's just something I'm not used to seeing as a prosecutor.” The memo has still not been released, despite efforts from defense attorneys to subpoena the document. Harris' campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

[brashley46]

One more thing to NOT like about Kamala Harris: Not only is she a former DA who got this complaint against her from a Superior Court justice, "In 2012, Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ruled that San... https://t.co/CSMcSwouUI

One more thing to NOT like about Kamala Harris: Not only is she a former DA who got this complaint against her from a Superior Court justice, "In 2012, Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ruled that San... https://t.co/CSMcSwouUI

— (((brashley46))) (@brashley46) June 29, 2019

via Twitter https://twitter.com/brashley46 June 29, 2019 at 05:54PM

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Citing COVID, Sutter Pushes To Revisit Landmark Antitrust Settlement

Six months after agreeing to a $575 million settlement in a closely watched antitrust case filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Sutter Health has yet to pay a single dollar, and no operational changes have gone into effect. The nonprofit health care giant was accused of using its market dominance in Northern California to illegally drive up prices.

Late last week, lawyers for Sutter filed a motion requesting that San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo delay approval of the settlement for an additional 90 days, due to “catastrophic” losses stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Massullo originally was scheduled to rule on the agreement in February, but in April granted an earlier request from Sutter for a 60-day delay in the proceedings.

In court documents supporting its request, Sutter argues the pandemic has upended the financial landscape for hospitals and made numerous aspects of the agreement untenable. Last month, Sutter reported an operating loss of $404 million through April, citing declining patient revenue and expenses resulting from the pandemic. System officials said that loss took into account the more than $200 million the system received in COVID-19 relief funds from the federal government via the CARES Act.

“We’re in a crisis situation,” David C. Kiernan, a lawyer representing Sutter, told Massullo during a settlement conference earlier this month. “There are certain provisions that, if they went into effect today, would interfere with Sutter’s ability to provide coordinated and integrated care to patients in California.”

Don't Miss A Story

Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter, delivered every Friday.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

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The settlement, announced in December, marked a dramatic turn in a long-running legal battle initiated in 2014 as a class-action lawsuit filed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union & Employers Benefit Trust, representing employers, unions and local governments whose workers use Sutter services. Becerra’s office joined the case in 2018.

Sutter has 24 hospitals, 34 surgery centers and 5,500 physicians across Northern California, with $13 billion in operating revenue in 2019. Among other allegations, the state’s lawsuit argued Sutter has aggressively bought up hospitals and physician practices throughout the Bay Area and Northern California, and exploited that market dominance for profit.

Health care costs in Northern California, where Sutter is dominant, are 20% to 30% higher than in Southern California, even after adjusting for cost of living, according to a 2018 study from the Nicholas C. Petris Center at the University of California-Berkeley that was cited in the complaint.

In agreeing to the settlement, Sutter did not admit wrongdoing. Throughout the proceedings, it has maintained that its integrated health system offers tangible benefits for patients, including affordable rates and consistent high-quality care.

Still, under terms of the settlement, Sutter agreed to end a host of practices that Becerra alleged unfairly stifled competition. Among other conditions, the settlement requires Sutter to limit what it charges patients for out-of-network services and increase transparency by allowing insurers and employers to give patients pricing information.

Sutter Health spokesperson Amy Thoma Tan, in a statement to KHN, said the health care system “has not objected to any aspect of the settlement” but is asking whether the settlement approval process should be deferred, “given the extreme disruption to the health care industry caused by COVID-19 and the potential for COVID-19 to materially impact certain settlement terms.”

In the court papers filed last week, Sutter’s attorneys went further, arguing that the settlement “may no longer make sense in its current form and could jeopardize Sutter’s ability to continue providing care.

“In this regard, Plaintiffs’ statement that they will not reassess even a single provision of a proposed injunction negotiated prior to COVID-19 is troublesome because it ignores the potentially harmful consequences of railroading the settlement through to approval in such an uncertain time,” they continued.

The court filing notes some specific settlement terms Sutter now considers problematic. Among them is a provision that calls for Sutter to end its all-or-nothing contracting deals with payers, which demanded that an insurer that wanted to include any one of the Sutter hospitals or clinics in its network must include all of them. Also cited is a provision that would limit the size of rate increases. Sutter says in the filing that it now may need to increase prices more than expected to pay for personal protective equipment and other unanticipated costs resulting from the pandemic.

In its filing, Sutter does not specifically object to the $575 million settlement amount. But Jaime King, an associate dean at UC Hastings College of the Law who has followed the case, said the request for a delay could be a tactical strategy to support such a move.

“The longer they can delay, the more they can show they have significant losses from COVID-19, which allows them to plead for a lower settlement,” King said.

While Becerra’s office has acknowledged the difficult circumstances that the pandemic has created for California hospitals, state lawyers said the settlement is binding and should not be delayed further.

“The plaintiffs are not going to renegotiate the settlement,” Emilio Varanini, a lawyer from Becerra’s office, told Massullo last month. “It’s even more in the public interest in an era of COVID-19 that COVID-19 not be an excuse to allow anticompetitive acts that will hurt consumers.”

Richard Grossman, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, echoed that sentiment. “Every hospital system in California is required to abide by California’s antitrust statutes, and they are all required to abide by the rules of competition that are prescribed by our legislature,” Grossman told KHN. “Sutter does not get an exception to that because there is a pandemic.”

Sutter has earned an average 43% annual profit margin over the past decade from medical treatments paid for by commercial insurers, like that provided by the plaintiff companies, according to a recent analysis by Glenn Melnick, a health care economist at the University of Southern California. “Google and Apple would be jealous of those profit margins!” Melnick said.

Without a settlement in place, critics said, Sutter can continue to employ the negotiating tactics that the attorney general called anticompetitive. Some noted, with irony, that the more than $200 million in relief funds Sutter received from the federal CARES Act was based on a formula that awarded funds according to a hospital’s prior-year revenues — meaning Sutter was compensated for a pricing system the attorney general argued was artificially inflated.

“I’d be curious if they’re trying to get in their last licks on using these types of tactics to inflate prices in one last round of negotiations with insurers and other payers,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California.

Citing COVID, Sutter Pushes To Revisit Landmark Antitrust Settlement published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Citing COVID, Sutter Pushes To Revisit Landmark Antitrust Settlement

Six months after agreeing to a $575 million settlement in a closely watched antitrust case filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Sutter Health has yet to pay a single dollar, and no operational changes have gone into effect. The nonprofit health care giant was accused of using its market dominance in Northern California to illegally drive up prices.

Late last week, lawyers for Sutter filed a motion requesting that San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo delay approval of the settlement for an additional 90 days, due to “catastrophic” losses stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Massullo originally was scheduled to rule on the agreement in February, but in April granted an earlier request from Sutter for a 60-day delay in the proceedings.

In court documents supporting its request, Sutter argues the pandemic has upended the financial landscape for hospitals and made numerous aspects of the agreement untenable. Last month, Sutter reported an operating loss of $404 million through April, citing declining patient revenue and expenses resulting from the pandemic. System officials said that loss took into account the more than $200 million the system received in COVID-19 relief funds from the federal government via the CARES Act.

“We’re in a crisis situation,” David C. Kiernan, a lawyer representing Sutter, told Massullo during a settlement conference earlier this month. “There are certain provisions that, if they went into effect today, would interfere with Sutter’s ability to provide coordinated and integrated care to patients in California.”

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The settlement, announced in December, marked a dramatic turn in a long-running legal battle initiated in 2014 as a class-action lawsuit filed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union & Employers Benefit Trust, representing employers, unions and local governments whose workers use Sutter services. Becerra’s office joined the case in 2018.

Sutter has 24 hospitals, 34 surgery centers and 5,500 physicians across Northern California, with $13 billion in operating revenue in 2019. Among other allegations, the state’s lawsuit argued Sutter has aggressively bought up hospitals and physician practices throughout the Bay Area and Northern California, and exploited that market dominance for profit.

Health care costs in Northern California, where Sutter is dominant, are 20% to 30% higher than in Southern California, even after adjusting for cost of living, according to a 2018 study from the Nicholas C. Petris Center at the University of California-Berkeley that was cited in the complaint.

In agreeing to the settlement, Sutter did not admit wrongdoing. Throughout the proceedings, it has maintained that its integrated health system offers tangible benefits for patients, including affordable rates and consistent high-quality care.

Still, under terms of the settlement, Sutter agreed to end a host of practices that Becerra alleged unfairly stifled competition. Among other conditions, the settlement requires Sutter to limit what it charges patients for out-of-network services and increase transparency by allowing insurers and employers to give patients pricing information.

Sutter Health spokesperson Amy Thoma Tan, in a statement to KHN, said the health care system “has not objected to any aspect of the settlement” but is asking whether the settlement approval process should be deferred, “given the extreme disruption to the health care industry caused by COVID-19 and the potential for COVID-19 to materially impact certain settlement terms.”

In the court papers filed last week, Sutter’s attorneys went further, arguing that the settlement “may no longer make sense in its current form and could jeopardize Sutter’s ability to continue providing care.

“In this regard, Plaintiffs’ statement that they will not reassess even a single provision of a proposed injunction negotiated prior to COVID-19 is troublesome because it ignores the potentially harmful consequences of railroading the settlement through to approval in such an uncertain time,” they continued.

The court filing notes some specific settlement terms Sutter now considers problematic. Among them is a provision that calls for Sutter to end its all-or-nothing contracting deals with payers, which demanded that an insurer that wanted to include any one of the Sutter hospitals or clinics in its network must include all of them. Also cited is a provision that would limit the size of rate increases. Sutter says in the filing that it now may need to increase prices more than expected to pay for personal protective equipment and other unanticipated costs resulting from the pandemic.

In its filing, Sutter does not specifically object to the $575 million settlement amount. But Jaime King, an associate dean at UC Hastings College of the Law who has followed the case, said the request for a delay could be a tactical strategy to support such a move.

“The longer they can delay, the more they can show they have significant losses from COVID-19, which allows them to plead for a lower settlement,” King said.

While Becerra’s office has acknowledged the difficult circumstances that the pandemic has created for California hospitals, state lawyers said the settlement is binding and should not be delayed further.

“The plaintiffs are not going to renegotiate the settlement,” Emilio Varanini, a lawyer from Becerra’s office, told Massullo last month. “It’s even more in the public interest in an era of COVID-19 that COVID-19 not be an excuse to allow anticompetitive acts that will hurt consumers.”

Richard Grossman, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, echoed that sentiment. “Every hospital system in California is required to abide by California’s antitrust statutes, and they are all required to abide by the rules of competition that are prescribed by our legislature,” Grossman told KHN. “Sutter does not get an exception to that because there is a pandemic.”

Sutter has earned an average 43% annual profit margin over the past decade from medical treatments paid for by commercial insurers, like that provided by the plaintiff companies, according to a recent analysis by Glenn Melnick, a health care economist at the University of Southern California. “Google and Apple would be jealous of those profit margins!” Melnick said.

Without a settlement in place, critics said, Sutter can continue to employ the negotiating tactics that the attorney general called anticompetitive. Some noted, with irony, that the more than $200 million in relief funds Sutter received from the federal CARES Act was based on a formula that awarded funds according to a hospital’s prior-year revenues — meaning Sutter was compensated for a pricing system the attorney general argued was artificially inflated.

“I’d be curious if they’re trying to get in their last licks on using these types of tactics to inflate prices in one last round of negotiations with insurers and other payers,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California.

Citing COVID, Sutter Pushes To Revisit Landmark Antitrust Settlement published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[rolandfontana]

How Kamala Harris Poorly Managed a Crisis as DA

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), a presidential candidate, was San Francisco’s top prosecutor, running to become California’s elected attorney general, when a scandal stunned her office and threatened to upend her campaign, the Washington Post reports.  One of Harris’s top deputies told a colleague that a crime lab technician had become “increasingly UNDEPENDABLE for testimony.” Later, the technician allegedly took home cocaine from the lab, possibly tainting evidence and raising concerns about hundreds of cases. Neither Harris nor her prosecutors informed defense attorneys of the problems. Harris “failed to disclose information that clearly should have been disclosed,” Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo wrote in 2010. Harris blamed the police for failing to inform defense lawyers. She estimated that only about 20 cases initially would be affected. Then, with the criminal-justice system at risk of devolving into chaos, Harris took the extraordinary step of dismissing 1,000 drug-related cases, including many in which convictions had been obtained and sentences were being served.

Casting herself as a “progressive prosecutor” who was concerned for the rights of defendants, Harris has highlighted her seven years as San Francisco’s top law enforcement official as evidence of how she balanced her roles. A review of the case presents a portrait of Harris scrambling to manage a crisis for which she was unprepared. It also shows how Harris, after six years as DA, had failed to put in place guidelines for ensuring that defendants were informed about potentially tainted evidence and testimony that could lead to unfair convictions. Harris told the Post that the crime lab was run by the police. She took responsibility for the failings. “No excuses,” Harris said. “The buck stops with me.” Jeff Adachi, the city’s elected public defender, said before he died on Feb. 22 that Harris was “slow to respond.”

How Kamala Harris Poorly Managed a Crisis as DA syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/