The fate of the beleaguered Cigna Corp. settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by the nation’s doctors will be decided by a panel of federal judges, U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno said in his Miami courtroom Friday.
The multidistrict panel will meet in Los Angeles on Jan. 28 to consider what to do with the settlement. It will probably make a final decision within two months about whether to send the settlement to Moreno’s jurisdiction or to return it to federal court in East St. Louis, Ill., where the settlement was originally presented.
Moreno said Friday he would be happy for the panel to make the decision.
“Frankly, I don’t really care,” he told the lawyers for the two sides.
The Cigna settlement–valued at from $50 million to $200 million–was put on hold earlier this month by Moreno because the multidistrict panel had put him in charge of hearing the class-action suit by 700,000 doctors against the nation’s largest health insurers, including Aetna, UnitedHealthcare and Humana.
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Cigna had reached the settlement, with a different group of lawyers representing the doctors, in front of U.S. District Judge G. Patrick Murphy in Illinois.
After the doctors’ lawyers in the Miami case complained, Moreno slapped an injunction on Cigna, accusing the nation’s third-largest health insurer of “underhanded maneuvers” in avoiding his jurisdiction.
Cigna objected, saying it had not been allowed an evidentiary hearing before the injunction.
On short notice, Moreno ordered evidence to be submitted Friday, but Cigna concluded the issue was moot after both Moreno and Murphy announced that the panel should decide what to do with the proposed settlement. If the settlement is returned to Illinois, it will probably go forward with the support of Murphy, who called it a “good settlement.”