Geisinger Medical Center in Danville
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. – Geisinger Health and Evangelical Community Hospital are paying $28.5 million to settle allegations they had a “no poach” agreement that left health care workers unable to further their careers.
Plaintiff lawyers in January asked a Pennsylvania federal judge to approve the agreement, which is funded with $19 million from Geisinger and $9.5 million from Evangelical. They filed a class action in 2021, alleging the hospitals conspired to not hire each other’s employees in Union, Snyder, Northumberland, Montour, Lycoming and Columbia counties.
The alleged collusion came to light in 2020 when the U.S. Department of Justice brought an antitrust case over Geisinger’s partial acquisition of Evangelical.
Each class member will receive a minimum $250 payment plus their pro rata recovery from the settlement fund. The estimated average recovery is $1,500.
Attorneys from the firms Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy and Berger Montague are asking for one-third of the settlement - $9.5 million – plus $2.7 million in expenses. Most of those expenses were paid to experts, one of whom died during the case, who testified for the plaintiffs.
“Here, class counsel collectively sent 24,057.4 hours prosecuting this case over more than four years, resulting in a lodestar value of $16,895,386.50 at current rates,” the motion says.
The lodestar multiplier for fees is 0.56 – “Courts have found that a negative multiplier is strong additional support for the requested fee,” the motion adds.
The plaintiffs argued the agreement was intended to, and did, reduce competition for health care workers in Central Pennsylvania and, as a result, suppressed the job mobility and wages of the plaintiffs and members of the proposed class below the levels that would have prevailed, but for the agreement.
“Geisinger and Evangelical reached their unlawful horizontal agreement at the highest level of their organizations, through secretive verbal exchanges that were later confirmed by emails, which they agreed to conceal from outsiders, their respective employees who make up the proposed class, and the public,” the lawsuit says.
Geisinger disputed the allegations, stating that it regularly conducted outreach to gauge interest and hired workers from Evangelical.
