Disgraced doctor defiles the legal system

It wasn’t enough for Dipak Desai to defile the reputation of health care professionals across Southern Nevada. Now he’s making a mockery of the justice system, too.

Desai was the architect of the 2008 hepatitis C outbreak that prompted the largest patient-notification campaign in U.S. history. His endoscopy clinic was an infection-control house of horrors, contaminating vials of sedatives by re-using syringes. That someone who swore to first do no harm would violate such basic patient-safety protocols to make himself a few more bucks disgusted a medical community trying to move beyond a reputation for substandard care.

Desai also is accused of inflating his services in bills to Medicare and health insurance companies to further pad his bottom line. He and two of his nurse anesthetists face multiple felony charges in state court, including racketeering, insurance fraud and criminal neglect of patients. Desai and his clinic manager also face federal conspiracy and health care fraud charges.

Those cases have gone nowhere because Desai’s attorneys claim two strokes have left him incompetent to stand trial. Doctors at Lakes Crossing, the state’s maximum security mental health facility, determined after a six-month evaluation that Desai is faking the severity of his impairment.

On Tuesday, as he has many times before, Desai came to court catatonic, staring straight ahead without reaction to the arguments of his case. His defense wants to conduct its own exhaustive competency review, a step that almost certainly will push Desai’s trial even farther into the future.

Desai’s behavior brings to mind the 2002 comedy “Analyze That,” in which Robert De Niro plays Paul Vitti, a sociopathic mobster who pretends to be a vegetable to get out of prison and resume therapy with psychiatrist Ben Sobel, played by Billy Crystal. Only Desai’s act isn’t funny.

His patients trusted him to deliver important preventive care, and he made them very sick. Now he’s playing a very expensive game, at considerable cost to himself and taxpayers, to avoid justice. Because he’ll likely spend whatever remains of his wealth on his drawn-out defense, he has diverted patients’ lawyers in pursuit of deeper pockets.

Those attorneys have succeeded in shaking down the manufacturers of the propofol Desai’s clinics used on trumped-up product liability claims. This week, a jury awarded five plaintiffs $20.1 million in compensatory damages and $162.5 million in punitive damages from three drug makers, not on the grounds that their product was defective, but that the companies didn’t do enough to make sure their products were used properly. That verdict followed an absurd $500 million punitive judgment handed down last year. More such frivolous trials are forthcoming.

Desai knew what he was doing. And he knew what he was doing was wrong. No amount of injustice or courtroom shenanigans will change that.