Philly lawyer accused of falsifying medical records calls Uber’s suit a ‘tactic’ to scare attorneys

The Philly-area personal injury lawyer accused by Uber of working in concert with a group of medical professionals to falsify medical records told a federal judge that the lawsuit was part of a “business tactic” by the rideshare giant to scare attorneys away from representing crash victims.

Marc Simon, of Simon & Simon, asked the judge on Friday to toss out Uber’s complaint.

“If you are a lawyer who dares to sue Uber or its drivers (or a doctor who agrees to treat the victims of the Uber drivers’ negligence), Uber will destroy your career — call you a fraud, accuse you of criminal racketeering, seek ‘eight figures’ in damages, and demand the surrender of your law license," Simon’s filing said.

» READ MORE: Uber accuses a Philly-area law firm of using bogus medical reports in dozens of crash cases

Uber filed similar lawsuits against personal injury law firms in New York, California, and Florida in which the rideshare company alleges that attorneys conspired with medical professionals to fraudulently inflate medical costs in an effort to get higher settlements or verdicts.

“Their strategy is simple: use their unlimited resources to intimidate injured victims and bully their lawyers into silence,” Simon said. ”It won’t work."

Uber sued Simon & Simon in September, accusing the firm and its founder of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, saying the law was enacted “to address precisely this type of fraudulent pattern.”

The scheme, as alleged in Uber’s lawsuit, involved the firm providing instructions on the treatments clients should get at a New Jersey pain physician’s clinic and having clients often receive more than 20 chiropractic visits.

It culminated in expert reports written by a private-practice orthopedic surgeon who performed nearly 1,300 exams for Simon & Simon clients in the past three years, and the firm paid him about $1.5 million, according to the complaint.

The providers documented a need for extensive treatments that often contrasted with police reports where officers on the scene noted no injuries, the suit says.

The goal of the reports was to inflate cost-of-care projections, which Simon & Simon used in settlement negotiations to turn “low value claims into million-dollar-plus” requests, according to the complaint.

Simon was an obvious target for Uber in Philadelphia, the attorney’s filing says. He was viewed as an “easy hit” because of two recent instances in which federal judges sanctioned him.

The sanctions were related to firm procedures and jurisdictional issues, and neither order “even slightly resembles” the “outrageous fraud and criminal conspiracy” alleged by Uber, Simon said in his motion to dismiss.

One of the judges who sanctioned Simon noted in a blistering memo that the firm’s expert reports had “little relationship to real world medical care” and that when the same expert in every case projects “monumental future costs” it “becomes difficult to read the reports in question as credibly addressing actual patient needs.”

» READ MORE: He was killed in a car crash on Kelly Drive while riding in an Uber. Now, his family is taking the ride-share giant to court.

The attorney says Uber failed to show that it was injured by any alleged misrepresentation. As evidence of the conspiracy, Uber says Simon dropped the rideshare giant as a defendant from dozens of lawsuits in which the pain physician was the key expert once they asked question.

“For this reason, Uber did not plead (and could not have pled) that it paid any verdicts or settlement in such cases,” the Simon’s filing says.

The medical professionals also filed motions to dismiss the case.

A spokesperson for Uber said in a statement that the motions to toss out the lawsuit offer “no real response to the detailed and credible allegations of fraudulent conduct.”

“We are confident in the merits of our case and look forward to seeing the defendants in court,” the statement said.