Trial by Video

There would be no more cold calling of patients, and no more violations of his orders, West stated. At the first of the year he ordered Tulinski to return all the patient records she had acquired from Olmo.

In January, Olmo and several of the key defendants settled, agreeing to terms not much different from those they had been operating under since September. As part of the agreement, Olmo will pay a $5,000 fine at the rate of $100 a month -- hardly an onerous judgment. Four defendants who had little to do with billing practices held out for a trial. On February 18, the day before the trial was to begin, McQuarrie and Klug presented West with complaints from patients that they were being cold called again, this time by Ken Davis, an investigator from the Texas Insurance Department. Davis was the person who had originally brought the surgical assistants case to Tulinski, and he had worked with her all along. Tulinski insisted Davis was working on his own, but it didn't matter. West threw the attorney general's case out of his court, dismissing it with prejudice.

That may be just as well for Morales. He can say the hospitals obstructed his investigation and that an angry judge made a bad ruling. He can say that he will appeal, and eventually the case will dribble out of public consciousness. And what will be remembered won't be the private anger of a judge lambasting a representative of the attorney general. What will be remembered is the public anger of Dan Morales as he lambasted surgical assistants on 60 Minutes. Morales has won his case in the virtual, and highly selective, reality of television. And he has the video to prove it.