Charges against DaVita, former CEO should be dropped, business and lawyers’ groups argue

Legal briefs filed by authorities and nationalist concern organizations and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers reason that national charges successful an antitrust lawsuit against Denver-based DaVita Inc. and its erstwhile CEO Kent Thiry should beryllium dismissed.

In a little filed Thursday, the Colorado Chamber of Commerce said the authorities shouldn’t beryllium utilized arsenic “a laboratory” for a caller exertion of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The U.S. Department of Justice announced successful July that a national expansive assemblage handed up a two-count indictment against DaVita and Thiry for conspiring with different wellness attraction firms to not solicit each other’s employees.

The charges stem from an probe by the DOJ’s Antitrust Division into worker allocation agreements successful which wellness attraction providers pledged to not enlistee each other’s workers. The agreements bounds workers’ quality to gain higher wage and beforehand their careers, the DOJ said.

But the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the transgression defence lawyers’ relation said nary tribunal has recovered that non-solicitation agreements are illegal, per se. That raises questions astir the close of owed process due to the fact that of the deficiency of just announcement astir whether an enactment is illegal, the organizations said.

“Under the instrumentality that exists contiguous (and successful each of the years earlier today), determination has been thing adjacent to a ‘fair warning’ that no-solicitation oregon no-hire agreements represent per se violations of the Sherman Act that mightiness springiness emergence to transgression liability. Just the opposite,” the transgression defence lawyers’ radical said successful its brief.

The DOJ is besides usurping the authorization of Congress and the courts by declaring that “no-poaching” agreements are transgression offenses, according to the briefs.

In a erstwhile statement, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard A. Powers of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division said those who conspire to deprive workers of their free-market opportunities and mobility “are committing superior crimes that we volition prosecute to the afloat grade of the law.”

The indictment charges DaVita and Thiry with conspiring with Surgical Care Affiliates to not solicit each other’s senior-level employees from arsenic aboriginal arsenic February 2012 until July 2017. Surgical Care Affiliates was charged successful January successful a lawsuit pending successful the Northern District of Texas.

The 2nd number charges DaVita and Thiry with conspiring with different wellness attraction institution from arsenic aboriginal arsenic April 2017 until June 2019 to not solicit DaVita employees. The different institution wasn’t named successful July’s announcement. The DOJ didn’t respond to a petition Friday for the name.

If convicted, DaVita faces a maximum punishment of a $100 cardinal good per number and Thiry faces a maximum punishment of 10 years successful situation and a $1 cardinal good per count. The maximum fines could beryllium accrued depending connected losses sustained by employees.

The Antitrust Division has ignored and adjacent withheld grounds that could assistance Thiry, Karen Crummy, his spokeswoman said. She said the companies hired DaVita executives for years and are not competitors.

DaVita has called the charges “unjust and unwarranted.”

Thiry moved the office of DaVita from Segundo, Calif., to Denver successful 2009 and rapidly grew the company’s web of dialysis centers earlier stepping down arsenic CEO successful 2019 aft 2 decades astatine the helm of the company, 1 of the country’s largest providers of kidney dialysis services.

Over the years, the institution has faced several national investigations.