The husband of “The View” host Sunny Hostin, along with 200 co-defendants accused of insurance fraud in a sweeping, $459 million New York lawsuit, could find himself tied up in court for years to come, according to legal experts.
Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Hostin, an orthopedic surgeon, is among dozens of doctors and medical personnel named in the federal lawsuit, which was filed last month by American Transit Insurance Co., a New York-based commercial auto insurance provider that insures Uber, Lyft, and taxi companies in the state. Hostin in particular is accused of receiving kickbacks by “performing surgery and fraudulently billing” American Transit, according to the lawsuit.
It cites at least two of Hostin’s patients who were allegedly treated in January 2023 following involvement in “low-impact” collisions that caused only minimal damage. Despite experiencing “no more than soft-tissue injuries,” both received 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’s also one that risks entangling defendants such as Hostin in years of complex court proceedings— and potentially saddling them with massive payouts as a result.
That’s because RICO laws— passed in the 1970s as an attempt to crack down on mafia activity and other organized crime— allow plaintiffs to win “treble damages,” awards that are triple the amount of actual, or compensatory damages.
In the American Transit case, that’s somewhere in the ballpark of $459 million or more— three times as high as their compensatory damages, which stand at $153 million.
Intimidation factor, chilling effect
Often, these types of lawsuits are pursued with a certain strategy in mind, said Michael Mears, an associate law professor at the John Marshall Law School who specializes in criminal law and RICO cases.
“There’s a lot more going on with the use of the RICO statute than just recovering damages,” Mears told Fox News Digital in an interview. “It’s changing behaviors. It’s changing attitudes. It’s changing the way business is done sometimes.”
RICO civil lawsuits are sometimes used as a means to force people or stop certain behaviors and oppressive practices. In the case involving Hostin, that includes allegedly habitual over-billing by doctors and ambulatory services, or the overcharging of patients to an extraordinary degree.
In the New York case, for example, “you’ve got doctors who really don’t want to be called criminals,” Mears said. “Just the accusations 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 activity ahead for defendants named in the American Transit lawsuit, including Hostin.
Complex cases, lengthy timelines
Civil RICO cases are often lengthy, arduous cases for each of the individuals involved.
In fact, the 698-page lawsuit filed by American Transit is among the largest RICO civil cases ever filed in New York— all but ensuring a drawn-out resolution process for Hostin and other defendants.
Courts “are going to look at the individual claims made against each defendant to establish all the elements of a RICO claim, and all the elements of RICO claims are pretty complicated,” Grell said.
Many of the defendants— if not all— will attempt to move 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 attempting to have their motion to dismiss granted by the court, further adding to the drawn-out time frame.
After the motions to dismiss are resolved, the discovery process begins. This process can be lengthy and complex, as it involves each person named in the suit, and the counsel for each defendant will attempt to make the case that their client individually does not satisfy the elements of the RICO case.
“Like in any other civil lawsuit, the RICO statute allows people to take depositions,” Mears said of the time frame for RICO cases. “They allow the collection of documents. They allow the discovery of filling records.”
Ultimately, it’s a process that “opens up a whole avenue to find out what’s going on within the organization— whether it’s a doctor’s office, a hospital, a doctor’s group,” he said, and which allows plaintiffs to order discovery and document collection from each individual named.
That can result in the case dragging on for even longer.
“In other words, the discovery process [in RICO cases] can be very intimidating,” Mears said. “It’s a long game.”
Sunny Hostin, for her part, has weighed in on her husband’s work as a doctor in her role co-hosting “The View.”
Most recently, Hostin referred to his work in a discussion over health insurance in the wake of the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City.
“Doctors suffer because of big corporations as well, doctors that want to do good 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 they don’t have insurance and then has to sue health insurance companies to get paid for the work that he’s been trained his whole life to do.”
Hostin’s lawyers previously denied all allegations against him and described the filing a “blanket, scattershot, meritless lawsuit by a near-bankrupt insurance carrier,” according to the Daily Mail.
They did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the allegations or any timeline anticipated in the RICO proceedings.
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