$55 Million Settlement for 282 Indiana Patients Subjected to Unnecessary Sinus Surgeries by Fugitive ENT Dr. Mark Weinberger

For years, Dr. Mark Weinberger ran the Weinberger Sinus Clinic in Merrillville, Indiana, diagnosing nearly every patient who came through his door with sinus disease and recommending surgery. What patients did not know was that the procedures were often unnecessary, medically outdated, or performed negligently. Some patients left the operating room with holes drilled into their sinuses that left them in worse condition than before. One patient, a child, had scar tissue from Weinberger's surgery that made a legitimate tumor on her pituitary gland inoperable.

As malpractice claims mounted in 2004, Weinberger did not face them. He vanished, eventually traced to the Greek Islands and later to a remote stretch of the Italian Alps, where Italian police found him in December 2009. He was extradited to Indiana, where he pleaded guilty in 2012 to 22 counts of healthcare fraud -- billing insurers for procedures he never performed or did not medically justify. A federal court sentenced him to 84 months in prison.

By then, the civil litigation had grown to encompass hundreds of former patients. CohenMalad partner David Cutshaw and Barry Rooth of Theodoros and Rooth P.C. co-led the consolidated cases through Lake Superior Court before Judge John Pera. The sheer breadth of the litigation, spanning surgeries performed over multiple years against a defendant who had been a fugitive, created what Cutshaw called 'a cornucopia of legal issues.'

The Indiana Patient's Compensation Fund, the state mechanism that covers medical-malpractice awards exceeding a physician's primary insurance limits, agreed to pay $55 million to resolve 282 claims. An independent ethicist reviewed each case individually and developed a formula weighting the specific harm each patient suffered. Individual payouts ranged from roughly $120,000 to $470,000, with an average exceeding $200,000. The settlement was signed June 24, 2013. Separate litigation against Weinberger's primary malpractice insurer continued for remaining liability coverage.