I appreciate the comment, AC. For the record, my brother, an attorney, felt the same way you did, and many other lawyers did.
I mean this with all due respect, but there are those of who still feel like the government doesn't have the right to take whatever it wants, that we still have or should have 4th amendment rights. I am not sure if we are naive, you are jaundiced, or the reality is somewhere in the middle. I do respect your POV though now more than ever.
For the record though, the windmill has been damaged. The two DEA agents involved in this raid have been disciplined. The Texas Medical Board (TMB) has stopped doing these types of raids. The executive director (ED), Mari Robinson, whose signature is on this subpoena (even though she denied signing it) is not longer ED. Precompliance review is now part of Texas law. The TMB, whose charter has to be renewed every 12 years, was given only two years of life in the last legislative session, and the Texas legislature has given indications that changes to the TMB are coming.
The 5th Circuit ruled that the DEA could only look at partially redacted patient charts when using their subpoenas.
The whole story is the DEA looked at patient charts illegally by using a TMB subpoena. The DEA then issued its own subpoena trying to do a legal search after doing an illegal one. Dr. Zadeh had his staff and his attorneys sign sworn affidavits that the DEA had already illegally looked at patient charts, and the DEA's attorney didn't deny this allegation, but the 5th Circuit, likely assuming Dr. Zadeh was guilty of a crime, didn't buy it. They said there was not enough evidence that the DEA looked at charts.
In Dr. Zadeh's lawsuit against TMB personnel, it became crystal clear that the DEA did do an illegal search. The DEA filed a complaint about Dr. Zadeh to the TMB and in that complaint asked to look at patient charts, and TMB personnel went along with the DEA's scheme.
If you listen to the audio of these two cases, you can hear the tone of voice of the judges change. In the first case, the judges sound as if they were being asked to let a guilty doctor free. In the second, they saw what really happened: the DEA and TMB were breaking the law in an attempt to set up an innocent doctor. The judges, particularly Judge E Grady Jolly, were infuriated with the TMB and DEA.
As of now, the case is at the en banc stage and it has not been dismissed. A legal professor told Dr. Zadeh's team that Judge Willett's target audience with his opinion was not the legal community but the Supreme Court itself. He wants THIS case to go to the Supreme Court and have the court's decision on QI re calibrated.
Who knows? Maybe if you get the right angle, the right speed, and the right personnel, you can charge the windmill and it will topple over.
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Re:
I mean this with all due respect, but there are those of who still feel like the government doesn't have the right to take whatever it wants, that we still have or should have 4th amendment rights. I am not sure if we are naive, you are jaundiced, or the reality is somewhere in the middle. I do respect your POV though now more than ever.
For the record though, the windmill has been damaged. The two DEA agents involved in this raid have been disciplined. The Texas Medical Board (TMB) has stopped doing these types of raids. The executive director (ED), Mari Robinson, whose signature is on this subpoena (even though she denied signing it) is not longer ED. Precompliance review is now part of Texas law. The TMB, whose charter has to be renewed every 12 years, was given only two years of life in the last legislative session, and the Texas legislature has given indications that changes to the TMB are coming.
The 5th Circuit ruled that the DEA could only look at partially redacted patient charts when using their subpoenas.
The whole story is the DEA looked at patient charts illegally by using a TMB subpoena. The DEA then issued its own subpoena trying to do a legal search after doing an illegal one. Dr. Zadeh had his staff and his attorneys sign sworn affidavits that the DEA had already illegally looked at patient charts, and the DEA's attorney didn't deny this allegation, but the 5th Circuit, likely assuming Dr. Zadeh was guilty of a crime, didn't buy it. They said there was not enough evidence that the DEA looked at charts.
In Dr. Zadeh's lawsuit against TMB personnel, it became crystal clear that the DEA did do an illegal search. The DEA filed a complaint about Dr. Zadeh to the TMB and in that complaint asked to look at patient charts, and TMB personnel went along with the DEA's scheme.
If you listen to the audio of these two cases, you can hear the tone of voice of the judges change. In the first case, the judges sound as if they were being asked to let a guilty doctor free. In the second, they saw what really happened: the DEA and TMB were breaking the law in an attempt to set up an innocent doctor. The judges, particularly Judge E Grady Jolly, were infuriated with the TMB and DEA.
As of now, the case is at the en banc stage and it has not been dismissed. A legal professor told Dr. Zadeh's team that Judge Willett's target audience with his opinion was not the legal community but the Supreme Court itself. He wants THIS case to go to the Supreme Court and have the court's decision on QI re calibrated.
Who knows? Maybe if you get the right angle, the right speed, and the right personnel, you can charge the windmill and it will topple over.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by jz1861.
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