ED CARNES, Chief Judge:
Allstate Insurance Company and some of its affiliates (all of which we'll refer to as "Allstate") filed this lawsuit against multiple defendants, asserting claims for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment. The three defendants involved in this appeal — Best Care Medical Center, Inc., P.V.C. Medical Center, Inc., and Florida Rehabilitation Practice, Inc. — are medical clinics that appointed Dr. Sara Vizcay as their medical director. Allstate's central allegation is that Dr. Vizcay failed to systematically review billings as required by Florida's Health Care Clinic Act (the "Clinic Act"), Fla. Stat. §§ 400.990
Florida's Clinic Act requires clinics operating in and licensed by the State to "appoint a medical director or clinic director who shall agree in writing to accept legal responsibility for [certain enumerated] activities on behalf of the clinic." Fla. Stat. § 400.9935(1); see also
The three clinics involved in this appeal operated in and were licensed by the State of Florida. As a result, they were required to and did appoint a medical director to ensure their compliance with the Clinic Act's licensing requirements. All three clinics appointed the same medical director, Dr. Vizcay, who also purported to own and operate four other clinics.
Over the course of Dr. Vizcay's tenure, the clinics at which she worked submitted numerous insurance claims to Allstate for services that they claimed to have rendered to Allstate's insureds, and Allstate paid hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of benefits to the clinics. The clinics also billed Allstate for additional amounts that it has not yet paid.
On September 18, 2008, an Allstate investigator visited one of the clinics that Dr. Vizcay purported to own. Dr. Vizcay's statements during that visit led the investigator to believe that she was not adequately reviewing clinic billings. As a result, Allstate began a more expansive investigation. The investigation revealed that many of the claims that the clinics had submitted to Allstate were false, inaccurate, or misleading, and that the clinics had, in many cases, submitted claims for services that were never rendered at all or for amounts greater than the actual value of the services that were rendered.
On April 12, 2011, Allstate filed a lawsuit against (1) Dr. Vizcay, (2) the four clinics she purported to own, and (3) the three clinics at which she served as medical director (the ones involved in this appeal). Allstate contended that because Dr. Vizcay had not systematically reviewed clinic billings, the clinics at which she served as medical director had been operating in violation of the Clinic Act's licensing requirements and that, as a result, any claims submitted by those clinics during that time were noncompensable and unenforceable under the Act. Allstate sought to recover the money it paid to those clinics under theories of negligent misrepresentation, fraud, and unjust enrichment, and it also sought declaratory relief stating that it did not owe any amounts on the clinics' outstanding bills.
The case proceeded to trial. The jury found that Dr. Vizcay had failed to substantially comply with her medical director duties by failing to systematically review billings and that, as a result, the clinics at which she served as medical director were liable for negligent misrepresentation, fraud, and unjust enrichment. Although the jury awarded damages on all three claims, the district court entered a final judgment that reduced the jury's awards of damages for negligent misrepresentation and fraud to zero. The awards of damages for unjust enrichment are all that remain.
The clinics challenge the jury's verdict, and the district court's denial of their dispositive motions, on numerous grounds. Although they make some scattershot arguments in their initial brief to this Court,
As a threshold matter, the clinics contend that Florida law does not provide an insurer with a judicial remedy for a clinic's violation of the Clinic Act's licensing requirements and, in any event, recovery under a theory of unjust enrichment would be the wrong remedy. They are wrong on both counts.
In
In this case, Allstate contends that claims made by or on behalf of the clinics are noncompensable and unenforceable because the clinics were operating in violation of the Clinic Act's licensing requirements. Under
The clinics attempt to distinguish
The clinics next contend that even if Florida law provides an insurer with a judicial remedy for violations of the Clinic Act, a licensed clinic cannot be held liable for its medical director's failure to carry out the duties enumerated in the statute. The Act provides: "Each clinic shall appoint a medical director or clinic director who shall agree in writing to accept legal responsibility for [certain enumerated] activities on behalf of the clinic." Fla. Stat. § 400.9935(1). The clinics maintain that the "accept legal responsibility" language limits a clinic's liability, rules out a principal-agency relationship between a clinic and its medical director, and "explicitly places the onus of legal responsibility and liability for compliance squarely upon the [m]edical [d]irector." Along a similar vein, the clinics argue that a licensed clinic cannot be held liable for its medical director's fraud or negligent misrepresentation because a medical director's knowledge or representations cannot be attributed to the clinic at which she serves.
The clinics' interpretation of the Clinic Act ignores the inconvenient fact that the statute requires the medical director to accept legal responsibility "
The plain meaning of the statutory language shows that the Florida legislature intended to establish, not eschew, a principal-agent relationship between a clinic and its medical director. And it is hornbook law that "a principal may be held liable for the acts of its agent that are within the course and scope of the agency."
The clinics next contend that even if a clinic can be held liable for its medical director's failure to comply with the Clinic Act, the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support the jury's finding that Dr. Vizcay failed to substantially comply with the statute's requirements. We will reverse a jury's verdict "only if the facts and inferences point overwhelmingly in favor of one party such that reasonable people could not arrive at a contrary verdict."
The clinics point out that Dr. Vizcay testified that she randomly selected for review at each clinic at least five billings per month. Because the Clinic Act does not state how many files a medical director must review, the clinics assert, it's not clear that Dr. Vizcay's review was inadequate.
The Clinic Act does not state exactly how thorough a medical director's systematic review must be, but this case does not require us to define the bare minimum of the statute's review requirements. Whatever that minimum is, the jury was presented with enough evidence to find that Dr. Vizcay did not come close to satisfying it. When asked about her review "system" at trial, Dr. Vizcay was unfamiliar with the number of patients being treated at her clinics and admitted that she did not have a methodology for ensuring that the clinics were properly coding medical services. Allstate's medical billing expert testified that the evidence of improper and abusive billing practices was so prevalent that it would have been readily apparent to someone conducting even a cursory review. Based on that evidence, the jury was well within bounds to find that Dr. Vizcay had failed to adequately review billings, systematically or otherwise.
The evidence presented at trial supported the jury's finding that Dr. Vizcay did not substantially comply with the Clinic Act's requirements. As a result, the claims submitted by the clinics to Allstate were noncompensable and unenforceable, and Allstate was entitled to recover the amounts it had paid and to obtain a declaratory judgment that it is not required to pay the clinics the amounts of any outstanding bills. See
The clinics' final contention on the merits is that Allstate's fraud claims are barred by Florida's statute of limitations. Under Florida law, an action for fraud must be brought within four years. Fla. Stat. § 95.11(3)(j). Like many jurisdictions, however, Florida applies the delayed discovery rule, under which "the statute of limitations begins to run when a person has been put on notice of his right to a cause of action."
Allstate argues that the statute of limitations began running on September 18, 2008, when its investigator first visited Dr. Vizcay and began to suspect fraud. If Allstate is right about when the clock started running, the filing of the lawsuit on April 12, 2011, was within the four-year limitations period.
The clinics do not contend that, with the exercise of due diligence, Allstate could have or should have discovered the fraud before September 2008. Nor do they contend that the statute of limitations should have started running earlier for some other
Even under a charitable reading, the clinics' argument makes no sense. According to their view, the statute of limitations on Allstate's claims should have started running on the same day Allstate filed its complaint. If that were true, Allstate timely filed its complaint within the four-year limitations period. How the clinics infer from their depiction of the facts that Allstate could pursue only the money it paid to the clinics after the filing of its complaint, by which time it was no longer paying the clinics any more money, is beyond understanding.
Finally, the clinics contend that the district court erred in denying their motions to bifurcate the trial into two trials, one for the clinics at which Dr. Vizcay served as medical director (the appellants here) and another for Dr. Vizcay and the clinics she purported to own. They argue that separate trials were required to avoid prejudice given the complexity of the claims, the number of defendants, and the number of witnesses, all of which created the possibility of confusion among the jurors. "We will not disturb a district court's decision not to order separate trials absent an abuse of discretion."
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42(b) provides: "For convenience, to avoid prejudice, or to expedite and economize, the court may order a separate trial of one or more separate issues, claims, crossclaims, counterclaims, or third-party claims." In determining whether to order separate trials, the district court should consider:
A district court properly exercises its discretion not to bifurcate a trial when a joint trial will "save[] the [parties] from wasteful relitigation, avoid[] duplication of judicial effort, and ... not materially prejudice [the parties'] rights."
The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the clinics' motion to bifurcate. Given Dr. Vizcay's involvement with all of the clinics, there was substantial overlap in the issues, facts, evidence, and witnesses. Separate trials would have resulted in wasteful litigation and duplication