Today, the Coalition to Preserve Maimonides announced that it has filed an Article 78 petition in New York State Supreme Court in Albany County to stop New York City Health + Hospitals’ proposed takeover of Maimonides Medical Center.

The petition asks the court to annul the Public Health and Health Planning Council’s September 17 approval, alleging that the State approved an unprecedented hospital takeover without the full, transparent, and legally required review of H+H’s authority, operating structure, financial feasibility, community impact, and record as a hospital operator.

Read the petition

The filing follows the Coalition’s prior successful lawsuit requiring certificate-of-need review; the Coalition contends that the resulting review exposed fundamental deficiencies in the proposed takeover rather than resolved them.

“The New York City public hospital system’s attempted takeover of a cherished non-profit, private hospital is unprecedented and illegal,” said Martin Bienstock, an attorney representing the Coalition to Preserve Maimonides. “We won our last lawsuit forcing the transaction to undergo a public review process. We’ve now asked the courts to step in again because that review process made clear that the transaction is unauthorized under the governing statutes, that all required approvals were not sought, that H+H’s abysmal performance record makes it not competent to operate Maimonides, and that this transaction makes no sense financially.

Bienstock continued, “The more than $2 billion in public funds the State has committed should be used to secure Maimonides' future, not to rush through a seizure that leaves patients and workers facing even greater uncertainty.”

The Coalition also seeks to require a genuinely independent health equity assessment, establishment applications for every entity that will exercise hospital-operating authority, a complete review of H+H’s operating record, and public review of materials that the petition alleges were considered or discussed outside the public record.

“H+H intends to control Maimonides through private entities, including an entity that would employ more than 5,000 workers, even though the governing statute requires H+H to operate its hospitals as a public authority and to employ the workforce itself,” said Akiva Shapiro, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “The State cannot approve an irreversible restructuring of a vital community hospital based on an arrangement the law does not authorize, then leave the core terms to be worked out later.”