BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A well being clinic in a Montana city affected by lethal asbestos contamination has filed for chapter safety after a decide ordered it to pay the federal government nearly $6 million in penalties and damages for submitting false medical claims.
The federal chapter submitting, submitted Tuesday, will permit the Center for Asbestos Related Disease clinic within the small city of Libby to proceed working whereas it appeals final month’s judgment, mentioned clinic director Tracy McNew.
A seven-person jury in June discovered the clinic submitted 337 false claims that made sufferers eligible for Medicare and different advantages they shouldn’t have obtained. The federally-funded clinic has been on the forefront of the medical response to lethal air pollution from mining close to Libby that left the city and the encompassing space contaminated with poisonous asbestos mud.
The $6 million judgment in opposition to it got here in a federal case filed by BNSF Railway underneath the False Claims Act, which permits personal events to sue on the federal government’s behalf. The clinic has denied any intentional wrongdoing and its attorneys have appealed the jury’s verdict to the ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
BNSF is itself a defendant in a whole bunch of asbestos-related lawsuits. It alleges the middle submitted claims on behalf of sufferers with out adequate affirmation that they had asbestos-related illness.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen awarded BNSF 25% of the full proceeds within the false claims case, as allowed underneath the False Claims Act.
Federal prosecutors beforehand declined to intervene within the matter, and there have been no prison prices introduced in opposition to the clinic.
The Libby space was declared a Superfund website 20 years in the past following media reviews that mine staff and their households had been getting sick and dying attributable to hazardous asbestos mud.
Health officers have mentioned not less than 400 folks have been killed and hundreds sickened from asbestos publicity within the Libby space.
The clinic has licensed greater than 3,400 folks with asbestos-related ailments and obtained greater than $20 million in federal funding, in response to court docket paperwork.
Asbestos-related ailments can vary from a thickening of an individual’s lung cavity that may hamper respiration to lethal most cancers.
Exposure to even a minuscule quantity of asbestos could cause lung issues, in response to scientists. Symptoms can take a long time to develop.
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