Mori, Bean and Brooks Lawsuit: Dismissal, Appeal, and Settlement

The Mori, Bean and Brooks lawsuit is a federal fraud case Aetna filed in December 2024 against the Jacksonville radiology practice and its parent company, Radiology Partners, accusing them of running a billing scheme that funneled more than 110,000 claims from unrelated radiologists through MBB’s tax identification number to collect over $20 million in inflated reimbursements. A federal judge in Florida dismissed the entire complaint with prejudice on April 16, 2026, ruling that Aetna could not use the courts to undo outcomes it lost in the No Surprises Act’s arbitration system. Aetna has appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.¹

What Aetna Alleged

Aetna filed suit on December 23, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division, before District Judge Brian J. Davis (case number 3:24-cv-01343).² The complaint contained 11 claims, including fraud and tortious interference with contract, and sought monetary damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief.

According to Aetna, Radiology Partners paid over $130 million in 2018 to acquire MBB largely because MBB held an unusually favorable in-network contract with Aetna, one that paid a “default rate” of 70% of billed charges.³ Aetna described what followed as a “multiphase healthcare fraud scheme.”

In the first phase, Radiology Partners allegedly directed other Florida radiology practices it owned or controlled to bill their services under MBB’s tax identification number instead of their own, even though those groups had separate in-network contracts with Aetna. The point, Aetna said, was to capture MBB’s higher reimbursement rate. The number of physicians billing under MBB’s TIN allegedly grew from about 50 in September 2018 to more than 1,000. Aetna also alleged that Radiology Partners caused MBB to inflate its billed charges by more than 60% on average after the acquisition.⁴

The second phase began after Aetna terminated its in-network contract with MBB in July 2022, making the practice an out-of-network provider. Aetna alleged that Radiology Partners kept routing Florida radiology services through MBB’s TIN and then used the No Surprises Act’s independent dispute resolution (IDR) process to challenge Aetna’s out-of-network payments. According to the complaint, Radiology Partners filed tens of thousands of IDR arbitrations, many of them for services performed by physicians who remained in-network under their own separate contracts and were therefore ineligible for the out-of-network dispute process. Aetna said the defendants “flooded” the system with simultaneous claims to overwhelm its ability to respond.³

All told, Aetna alleged that more than 110,000 claims were improperly billed through MBB’s TIN, resulting in over $20 million in payments the practice was not entitled to receive. The insurer also asked the court to vacate prior IDR arbitration awards and to block Radiology Partners from filing additional arbitrations tied to these claims.⁴

How Radiology Partners and MBB Responded

On February 25, 2025, Radiology Partners and MBB filed motions to dismiss the complaint and to compel arbitration. Radiology Partners CEO Rich Whitney called Aetna’s allegations “manufactured” and accused the insurer of “exploiting the system and avoiding payments—even when those payments are binding and ordered by a neutral, federally approved arbiter.”⁵

The defense made several arguments. It contended that Aetna had to exhaust the No Surprises Act’s administrative remedies and should have raised its eligibility challenges inside the IDR process rather than in court. It argued Aetna’s fraud claims lacked the specificity federal pleading rules require, and that Aetna had known about MBB’s billing structure as early as 2021 or 2022. Invoking the Federal Arbitration Act, the defense said judicial review of IDR outcomes is limited to narrow circumstances like fraud or arbitrator misconduct. On the merits, it maintained that Florida law permits a medical group holding a hospital staffing contract to bill for services using radiologists contracted from other groups, and pointed to a federal Medicare regulation allowing entities to bill for services provided by suppliers under contractual arrangements.⁶

Radiology Partners also pointed to MBB’s track record in IDR proceedings, saying federally appointed arbitrators had ruled in MBB’s favor in 98% of its disputes with Aetna, resulting in orders for Aetna to pay over $10.1 million in additional reimbursements.⁶

Why the Judge Dismissed the Case

On April 16, 2026, Judge Davis dismissed the entire complaint with prejudice, meaning Aetna cannot refile the same claims. The court held that Aetna could not use the lawsuit to “unwind” outcomes from the No Surprises Act’s IDR process after the fact, particularly when the insurer had the opportunity to raise its concerns through the arbitration process itself.¹

Davis found that Aetna failed to meet the high bar for challenging arbitration awards under the Federal Arbitration Act, emphasizing that arbitration outcomes are “entitled to significant deference” and may only be overturned in limited circumstances. He noted that Aetna had prior knowledge of the billing practices but did not raise those concerns during the arbitration proceedings, and concluded that letting the case proceed would undermine the finality of the arbitration system.⁷ While characterizing the allegations as a “close call,” the judge held that they did not provide a sufficient basis to bypass the NSA’s mandatory dispute resolution framework.⁸

The Appeal and Where the Case Stands

Aetna filed a notice of appeal on May 6, 2026, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, where the case was docketed as No. 26-11607. As of mid-2026, briefing is underway, with Aetna’s opening brief due July 17, 2026.⁹ The district court denied without prejudice a post-dismissal motion by Radiology Partners and MBB seeking attorney fees, allowing the defendants to refile after the appeal is decided.²

MBB’s Earlier False Claims Act Settlement

The Aetna case is not the first federal fraud matter involving MBB. In November 2020, the practice agreed to pay $1,490,515.20 to resolve allegations under the False Claims Act. The case began as a whistleblower lawsuit filed by Thomas Heyck, a radiologist formerly employed by MBB.¹⁰

The Department of Justice alleged that between April 2012 and February 2019, MBB billed Medicare and Medicaid for teleradiology interpretations performed outside the United States, in violation of regulations requiring such services to be performed domestically. The government further alleged that when readings were initially performed overseas, MBB had a U.S.-based radiologist reinterpret the work and then billed as if the domestic radiologist had performed the original read. The DOJ said MBB continued the practice until the federal investigation was disclosed. Heyck received 19% of the settlement proceeds, totaling $266,000. Radiology Partners, which had acquired MBB by the time the settlement was reached, stated there had been no determination of wrongdoing and that the settlement did not implicate the quality of services provided.¹¹

How the Dismissal Fits a Broader Pattern

The MBB ruling is part of a wave of insurer lawsuits challenging the No Surprises Act’s arbitration system, with little success so far. A week before Judge Davis’s decision, a federal judge in the Central District of California dismissed a similar suit brought by Anthem Blue Cross against HaloMD, a billing company Anthem accused of filing over 1,500 IDR proceedings between January 2024 and August 2025, roughly half of them ineligible. Judge Karen Scott ruled that judicial review of IDR determinations is “narrowly constrained” and that the insurer had “pleaded itself out of court” by acknowledging the alleged misconduct was disclosed to arbitrators during the IDR process.¹² That case is on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.¹³

UnitedHealthcare has also sued Radiology Partners on similar theories, filing a RICO and ERISA complaint in August 2025 in the District of Arizona. That case involves a different Radiology Partners affiliate, Sonoran Radiology, Ltd., which United alleges was used as a shell entity to submit ineligible IDR claims. United says it has paid more than $24 million in administrative fees on those disputes since January 2022.¹⁴ That case remained in active briefing as of mid-2026.

The back-to-back dismissals point to an early judicial consensus that the No Surprises Act’s IDR process is the primary venue for these billing disputes, and that federal courts will not serve as a backstop for insurers unhappy with arbitration outcomes. Legal commentators have said courts may still be open to certain RICO or contract-based theories that do not require unwinding individual IDR awards, and that conflicting appellate rulings could eventually reach the Supreme Court.⁸ For now, the MBB dismissal stands, subject to what the Eleventh Circuit decides.

1
Radiology Business. Judge Dismisses CVS Aetna’s Lawsuit Against Radiology Partners
2
PACER Monitor. Aetna Health Inc. et al. v. Radiology Partners Inc. et al.
3
Georgetown Law Litigation Tracker. Aetna v. Radiology Partners Complaint
4
Source on Healthcare. Aetna Suit Against Radiology Partners Has Implications for the No Surprises Act
5
Radiology Partners. Radiology Partners and Affiliated Practice Mori, Bean and Brooks Inc. Reject Aetna’s False Claims
6
Radiology Partners Motion to Dismiss. Radiology Partners Motion to Dismiss
7
Becker’s Payer Issues. Court Dismisses Aetna Suit Against Radiology Group
8
Georgetown Law O’Neill Institute. California Court Issues First Decision in Insurer Lawsuits Under the No Surprises Act
9
Georgetown Law Litigation Tracker. Aetna Health Inc. et al. v. Radiology Partners Inc. et al. – Appeal
10
U.S. Department of Justice. Jacksonville Radiology Practice Agrees to Pay $1.4 Million to Resolve Health Care Fraud
11
Radiology Business. Practice Settles Department of Justice Teleradiology Fraud Case
12
Becker’s Payer Issues. California Judge Dismisses Elevance’s No Surprises Act Lawsuit Against HaloMD
13
Georgetown Law Litigation Tracker. Anthem Blue Cross v. HaloMD LLC et al.
14
Georgetown Law Litigation Tracker. United Healthcare Services Inc. et al. v. Radiology Partners Inc. et al.