A split Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday overturned Sutter Health’s win in insurance plan purchasers’ $400 million antitrust suit, ruling that the lower court wrongly excluded “highly relevant” evidence — including admissions by Sutter executives — that would’ve helped the purchasers potentially prove claims they overpaid thanks to Sutter’s anticompetitive conduct.
The majority held that the California federal court abused its discretion when it excluded all evidence of Sutter’s conduct before 2006, or five years before the purchasers’ contracts were negotiated. That evidence would’ve refuted many of Sutter’s arguments during the 2022 jury trial, according to the opinion penned by U.S. Circuit Judge Lucy H. Koh and joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Roopali H. Desai.
On top of that, the district court should’ve instructed the jury to consider Sutter’s anticompetitive “purpose,” the majority said. Instead, it adopted Sutter’s proposed instructions, which omitted the word “purpose,” and told the jury that the purchasers had to prove that the “effect of Sutter’s conduct was to restrain competition,” per the ruling.
