Lebanon
Presiding Justice Richard McNamara’s Sept. 6 ruling is the final approval in a class-action case involving a state-run entity offering malpractice insurance to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers that has been in the works for years.
“We are pleased that once again the court has protected the vested contractual rights of these policyholders,” Allison McClain, a spokeswoman for Nixon Peabody, a firm that has a Manchester office and represents the policyholders, said by email on Tuesday. “The many proceedings they were required to pursue over the past decade, culminating with this final decision, has defended and returned approximately $195 million to the class members to whom it belongs.”
A 2009 surplus in the JUA’s funds prompted then-Gov. John Lynch to propose using $110 million of it to plug a hole in the state budget. That move was blocked by the New Hampshire Supreme Court in 2010.
The state has since decided to exit the medical malpractice market, pushing policyholders to the commercial market, and the JUA is in the process of dissolving.
In total, the returns to policyholders — who number more than 3,500 health care providers — will be 81 percent of the premiums they paid since 1986 for malpractice coverage, according to McNamara’s recent ruling. The portion addressed in the ruling includes about 35 percent of the total premiums policyholders paid.
The recent ruling involves distributing $85 million to policyholders. It will be distributed to individual policyholders based on the percentage of total premiums they paid. Some policyholders hold more than one policy, McClain said in an email.
In addition to distributing money to all policyholders, McNamara approved paying three members of the suit — Lebanon dermatologist Georgia Tuttle, Derry Medical Center and the Laconia-based LRGHealthcare — $25,000 each for their participation. He also approved using 25 percent of the total returned to policyholders to cover Nixon Peabody’s fee — almost $49 million, according to the judge’s decision, although the amount could decrease. McClain said the fee amount is uncertain.
For Tuttle, a former Lebanon mayor, the nearly 10-year battle has been a principled one aimed at ensuring that the contracts policyholders signed were honored.
“I feel vindicated,” Tuttle said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “ … You have to sometimes stand up for what’s right.”
Because the money owed policyholders who cannot be located will go into a fund administered by the Department of Health and Human Services for grants to support health care providers caring for underserved populations, Tuttle and the others involved will receive no additional benefit if they don’t locate policyholders, she said.
Tuttle said the experience of following this case through to the conclusion has “really restored my faith in our legal system.”
Through her efforts to locate policyholders and their heirs, Tuttle said she has met many interesting people in seven countries and 45 states.
“It will be a fun book to write,” she said.
McClain said she expects the first checks to go out to policyholders by Thanksgiving. The amount of money available for grants will depend on how much can be returned to policyholders, she said.
“We will not know that information until sometime next year after we conclude efforts to locate any missing policyholders,” McClain said in an email.
Tuttle was more cautious and said the money would be disbursed sometime in the next six months to a year.
“You never know,” she said. “Something could slow things down.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
