The husband of ‘The View’ host named in massive insurance fraud case likely to see years of litigation

Husband of Host of “The View.” Sunny Hostin, along with 200 co-defendants accused of insurance fraud in a sprawling $459 million New York lawsuit, could find themselves tied up in court for years to come, according to legal experts.

Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Hostin, an orthopedic surgeon, is among dozens of doctors and medical staff named in a federal lawsuit, filed last month by American Transit Insurance Co., a New York-based commercial auto insurance provider that insures Uber, Lyft and taxi companies in the state. Hostin is specifically accused of accepting bribes by “conducting operations and falsely billing” American Transit, the suit said.

He cites at least two of Hostin’s patients who were allegedly treated in January 2023 after being involved in “low impact” collisions that caused only minimal damage. Despite suffering “nothing more than soft tissue injuries,” both underwent arthroscopic surgery, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit was filed under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, in the Eastern District of New York—a strategy that legal experts told Fox News Digital was designed to have a chilling effect on the behavior. It’s also one that risks entangling defendants like Hostin in years of complex litigation—and potentially burdening them with huge payouts as a result.

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That’s because RICO laws—enacted in the 1970s as an attempt to crack down on mob activity and other organized crime—allow plaintiffs to receive “triple damages,” awards that are three times the actual amount or damages.

In the case of American Transit, that’s somewhere around $459 million or more—three times their $153 million compensatory damages.

Intimidation factor, chilling effect

Often, these types of lawsuits are pursued with a specific strategy in mind, said Michael Mears, an associate professor of law at John Marshall Law School who specializes in criminal law and RICO cases.

“There’s a lot more going on with the use of the RICO statute than just recovering damages,” Mears told Fox News Digital in an interview. “It changes behaviors. It changes attitudes. Sometimes it changes the way business is done.”

RICO civil lawsuits are sometimes used as a means of forcing people or stopping certain behaviors and oppressive practices. In the case involving Hostin, these include alleged habitual overcharging by physicians and outpatient services or overcharging of patients to an exceptional degree.

In the case of New York, for example, “you have doctors who really don’t want to be called criminals,” Mears said. “Just accusations [in] the civil RICO statute can be very intimidating and be a very powerful tool” to stop undesirable practices.

That doesn’t mean there’s a flurry of courtroom activity ahead for the defendants named in the American Transit lawsuit, including Hostin.

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Legal experts told Fox News Digital that civil RICO cases in today’s world are a long game—often taking years, not months, in court.

Plaintiffs in civil RICO cases are often insurance companies that accuse a group of people of fraud, Jeffrey Grell, an attorney who specializes in RICO litigation, said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

In the American Transit lawsuit, the insurance provider accuses Hostin and dozens of other doctors of abusing New York’s no-fault law to artificially inflate or bill for unnecessary medical treatments and profit from kickbacks.

No-fault laws require companies like American Transit to cover health care costs that are “reasonably incurred” as a result of injuries suffered by insured passengers. But the low burden of proof under no-fault laws also means they are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by doctors.

American Transit claims Hostin and other defendants abused New York’s no-fault laws to collect “hundreds of millions” of dollars in fraudulent payments between 2009 and December 2024.

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Complex cases, long deadlines

Civil RICO cases are often long, difficult cases for each individual involved.

In fact, the 698-page lawsuit filed by American Transit is one of the largest civil RICO lawsuits ever filed in New York—only ensuring a lengthy settlement process for Hostin and the other defendants.

Courts will “look at the individual claims against each defendant to determine all the elements of a RICO claim, and all the elements of a RICO claim are quite complicated,” Grell said.

Many of the defendants — if not all — will try to dismiss the case before discovery begins, a preliminary process that itself can last more than a year. There will often be a flurry of related motions filed by defendants in an attempt to get the court to grant their motion to dismiss, further extending the timeline.

Once the motions to dismiss are resolved, the discovery process begins. This process can be lengthy and complex, as it involves every person named in the lawsuit, and each defendant’s attorney will attempt to prove that their client individually does not meet the elements of a RICO case.

“As in any other civil case, the RICO statute allows people to make statements,” Mears said of the timeline for RICO cases. “They allow collection of documents. They allow disclosure of record filling.”

Ultimately, it’s a process that “opens up the whole way to find out what’s going on inside an organization — whether it’s a doctor’s office, a hospital, a medical group,” he said, and that allows prosecutors to order discovery and collect documents from each appointee. individual.

This can result in the case being dragged out even longer.

“In other words, the discovery process [in RICO cases] it can be very scary,” Mears said. “It’s a long game.”

Sunny Hostin, for her part, weighed in on her husband’s work as a doctor in her role as co-host of “The View.”

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Recently, Hostin reflected on his work in a debate about post-homicide health insurance UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York.

“Doctors also suffer because of big corporations, do-gooders like my husband,” Hostin said in the segment. She added that her husband, in his capacity as an orthopedist, “operates on someone without insurance and then has to sue the health insurance companies to get paid for the job he’s been trained to do his whole life.”

Hostin’s lawyers previously denied all charges against him and described the filing of a “broad, scattered, baseless lawsuit by a near-bankrupt insurance carrier,” according to the Daily Mail.

They did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the charges or any timeline set forth in the RICO proceeding.