Judge requests Brockovich’s role as plaintiff

Erin Brockovich built a career as a celebrity crusader for weighty causes. But this time she was wrong for the role, according to a federal judge in Santa Ana.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has dismissed several lawsuits that Brockovich filed this summer on behalf of Medicare. Carter ruled that Brockovich has no standing to sue hospitals and convalescent homes to recoup allegedly illicit funds the healthcare providers received from the federally funded health plan for seniors and disabled people.

Brockovich and her lawyers claimed in state and federal courts that healthcare providers were pocketing millions of taxpayer dollars by charging Medicare for medical errors and then charging again to fix those errors. She brought the suits as a citizen acting on behalf of the government.

The lawsuits did not cite specific instances of wrongdoing, pointing instead to federal reports that estimated medical errors cost Medicare more than $9 billion a year. Brockovich and her lawyers hoped to find evidence in the course of trying the cases, and would have collected legal fees if they were successful.

They sued some of the nation’s biggest hospital and nursing home chains, including Tenet Healthcare Corp., Adventist Health, Country Villa Service Corp., Catholic Healthcare West, Kindred Healthcare Inc. and Longwood Management Corp.

But Carter said Brockovich, a 46-year-old former legal assistant who became an instant celebrity after her environmental crusade against a utility company was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts, could not serve as a plaintiff. That’s because she is not an injured party and there is no specific law that grants her the power to sue on behalf of the government in this case, the judge ruled.

Carter dismissed five of the lawsuits last month and this week issued tentative dismissals on 24 more. The 29 cases represent the bulk of the more than 30 lawsuits Brockovich and her lawyers filed in California. Two more cases are pending in a federal court in San Diego, another in Carter’s court and at least one case in a state court in Fresno.

Attorneys for the hospitals called her crusade a waste of resources.

“There were 25 lawyers sitting in the courtroom all morning” waiting for the ruling Tuesday, said Mark A. Johnson, an attorney at Hooper, Lundy & Bookman Inc., which represented several defendants. “What was that costing the healthcare providers? That’s resources that could have gone into actual healthcare.”

The main law firm representing Brockovich, Wilkes & McHugh, has filed similar lawsuits elsewhere in the country using other plaintiffs. The law firm, which has an office in Rancho Palos Verdes, did not return calls for comment Wednesday.

But Brockovich issued a statement through an assistant that said she would appeal Carter’s decision.

“I am proud to be a consumer advocate on this issue and will continue to be,” she said.

daniel.yi@latimes.com