Controversial Las Vegas doctors get Supreme Court’s attention

Dr. Dipak Desai and Dr. Harriston Bass were the subjects of two significant unpublished opinions issued by the Nevada Supreme Court. Bass appealed his murder and drug-dealing convictions. Desai, whose name has become synonymous with reckless medical malpractice, has hardly scratched the surface of his legal odyssey.

Desai might have gained temporary protection from civil lawsuits when he filed for bankruptcy, but that has proved to be a double-edged sword.

The Nevada Supreme Court in an unpublished opinion dismissed an appeal Desai, Kusum Desai and Dr. Eladio Carrera filed when District Judge Allan Earl granted in part and denied in part a motion for a preliminary injunction in a medical malpractice claim.

Desai was the owner of three endoscopy clinics in Las Vegas that infected scores of patients by reusing contaminated syringes and vials of medicine. While the bankruptcy automatically stayed any civil lawsuits related to the largest hepatitis C outbreak notification in U.S. history, a federal judge did lift three cases out of the docket to permit trials.

The first one of those ended in the awarding of $500 million in punitive damages, a sum widely believed to  be the largest jury verdict in Nevada history, to Henry Chanin and his wife, Lorraine.

Desai was not a party to the case. His former staffers settled with Chanin prior to trial.

Read the unpublished opinion (pdf) and take a look at the law firms that received a courtesy copy. Looks like a who's who of the valley's legal eagles.

Here's the unpublished opinion regarding Dr. Bass. While the high court affirmed Judge Jackie Glass' denial of a motion for a new trial, justices went to great lengths -- 19 pages worth -- to explain why the doctor who used a PT Cruiser as his mobile office should stay convicted on one count of second-degree murder, 49 counts of possession of a controlled substance and six counts of possession with intent to sell.

Bass was convicted in the murder of Gina Micali, a Henderson woman who died of an overdose. The jury believed she obtained an unreasonable amount of opiates and anti-anxiety meds from Bass, who sold his patients their own prescriptions even though he did not have a pharmacist license.