A second federal lawsuit filed against the six local hospital groups, alleging they conspired against their employees by requiring COVID-19 vaccines, has been voluntarily dismissed.
It’s the second time the antitrust lawsuit has been filed and then voluntarily dismissed.
Among the allegations was that the hospital groups – Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the Christ Hospital Health Network, Bon Secours Mercy Health, TriHealth, UC Health and St. Elizabeth Healthcare – are requiring employees to be vaccinated even though, according to the lawsuit, there is no increasing spread of the delta variant.
“The plan was simple,” the lawsuit said. “If the six large systems stuck together, all the employees would be trapped.”
The pandemic and the vaccines created to battle it, the lawsuit alleged, is part of a fraud perpetrated by “government, pharmaceutical (companies), social media, mainstream media, corporate America, healthcare and political parties.”
According to data from the Health Collaborative, which tracks daily bed counts at more than 40 hospitals, the number of COVID-19 patients in the region's hospital and ICU beds remains on an upward trajectory. The number of COVID-19 patients is at its highest point since January and February.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the vaccines are safe and continue to reduce a person’s risk of contracting COVID-19. Courts and other regulators have ruled that employers can impose such mandates.
The first version of the lawsuit was filed Aug. 25 in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati and dismissed four days later. The second version was refiled Sept. 3 and then dismissed Friday evening, records show. The case was officially terminated Monday. Other lawsuits against the hospitals also were filed and dismissed.
UC Health, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Christ Hospital Health Network leaders said Aug. 5 in a news conference that they would start their vaccine mandate by Oct. 1. Bon Secours Mercy Health and St. Elizabeth Healthcare said they would require the shot by early fall.
Lawsuit in Kentucky to proceed
A separate lawsuit against St. Elizabeth Healthcare, filed in federal court in Covington, is still proceeding. Oral arguments are set for Sept. 22.
The law firm behind the lawsuits is the Independence-based Deters Law Firm. Its spokesman is Eric Deters, who has retired from practicing law after giving up his fight to have his law license reinstated.
Deters now regularly posts videos of political commentary on YouTube and elsewhere. In a video Monday, he said his firm is now focusing on the St. Elizabeth case because he believes it has the best chance of being successful.
“We want to win the first one,” he said in a video posted Monday. The case is before U.S. District Judge David Bunning, who was nominated for the bench two decades ago by President George W. Bush.
Deters said the antitrust case filed in federal court in Cincinnati was before U.S. District Judge Timothy Black, and the attorney handling it believed Black planned to dismiss it this week. There was a conference call Friday, Deters said, between Black and the attorneys on the case. He said the Deters Law attorney, Jim Maus, is his first cousin. According to Deters, Maus came out of that conference call believing “Judge Black is against us.”
Deters said Black, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, is a “diehard Democrat” who “thinks everyone should be vaccinated, no matter what.” He said Black planned to rule on the lawsuit without a hearing in open court.
Deters said his plan is to refile lawsuits against the Cincinnati hospital groups this week in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. The refiled lawsuits, he said, will not raise issues that will allow the hospitals to move the cases to federal court.
The court system is “political as hell,” Deters said in the video. “All the rulings against Trump… All the stuff that was said by these judges about Trump was just so bogus. And Judge Timothy Black was one of those.”
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