NY Personal Injury Attorney Sends Her Paralegal to a Hospital to Solicit a Patient

On February 28, 2005, respondent pled guilty to soliciting business on behalf of an attorney in violation of Judiciary Law § 479, an unclassified misdemeanor, and was sentenced to a conditional discharge. This conviction arose out of a sting operation targeting a medical clinic called the Medical Arts Center, in Queens County, whose manager ultimately pled guilty to enterprise corruption based on an insurance fraud scheme. The incident that led to respondent's guilty plea occurred when a staff member at the medical clinic telephoned respondent and informed her that the clinic had a patient who had sustained potentially serious injuries, but who had declined the clinic staffer's suggested referral to respondent. Respondent then instructed her paralegal to seek out and persuade that patient to retain her law firm. The purported patient was actually an undercover officer, and respondent was charged with violations of Judiciary Law sections 479 and 482, resulting in her plea of guilty to the charge under section 479.

What the testimony establishes is that respondent engaged in a practice that has repeatedly been described to this Court as standard among personal injury attorneys who accept referrals of patients from medical clinics; that is, they pay a substantial, standard sum to these clinics for each patient referred to them, ostensibly to pay for the clinic's providing a package of documents called a narrative report, relating the patient's diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis ( see Matter of Rudgayzer, --- AD3d ---, 2010 N.Y. Slip Op 9091 [1st Dept, December 9, 2010]; Matter of Meyerson, 46 AD3d 141 [2007] ). Even though it is permissible for attorneys to accept clients referred by medical establishments, and it is similarly permissible for attorneys to pay medical providers the market price for copies of documents needed to prosecute claims on behalf of those clients, both Rudgayzer and Meyerson illustrate the potential for impropriety inherent in this established system, by which clinics refer patients to attorneys, and receive, in turn, a payment from the attorney for the clinic's narrative reports on those patients.

In re Ravitch 2011 WL 781209, 1 (N.Y.A.D. 1 Dept.) (N.Y.A.D. 1 Dept.,2011)