Delta Dental lawsuit ongoing

Association alleges that Delta violated federal antitrust laws to restrict competition, reduce reimbursement amounts

In November 2019, the ADA filed a class action lawsuit against the Delta Dental Plans and the Delta Dental Plans Association. (PDF)

So, two years later, the question is, what is the status of the suit?

Under the court’s current scheduling order, the earliest this case potentially could proceed to trial would be sometime in 2024, according to ADA’s Division of Legal Affairs.

This extended timing is not unusual, said the legal division, as class action lawsuits typically take years to be resolved, especially complex antitrust cases. There are motions, extensive document productions, fact depositions, expert witnesses, a class certification hearing, and then additional discovery and various pre-trial motions — all before you even get to a trial, and potentially an appeal after the trial.

The ADA’s lawsuit alleges that Delta violated federal antitrust laws by allocating territories of operation and dividing the national market in order to restrict competition and reduce reimbursement amounts.

The complaint goes on to allege that Delta’s allegedly anticompetitive acts hurt both dentists and their patients by limiting the choices of dental care available to patients and making it more difficult for dentists to deliver the care that patients need and want.

Numerous individual dentists also filed class action complaints against Delta, and the allegations in the various complaints have since been combined into a single consolidated complaint. Judge Elaine Bucklo, in the federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois, is presiding over the consolidated pretrial proceedings in the litigation.

The Delta defendants filed a motion to dismiss the consolidated complaint, but Judge Bucklo issued an opinion denying Delta’s motion in September 2020, and the case is now in the discovery phase.

The discovery process starts with exchanging and reviewing voluminous amounts of documents, and then taking depositions relevant to the issue of class certification. The court’s scheduling order allows the parties to take up to 190 fact depositions, followed by briefing and a hearing for the court to decide whether the case should proceed as a class action, which is an important milestone in any class action lawsuit, according to the ADA’s legal division.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to certify a class of all dental providers in the United States who were reimbursed by a Delta Dental defendant, so that all dentists who have been injured by Delta’s allegedly anticompetitive conduct will be able to obtain appropriate money damages and benefit from an injunction making Delta change its practices.

Under the court’s scheduling order, the court will hold a hearing on the issue of class certification sometime in 2023.

ADA News will continue to update members when there are developments in the case.