PROFILE
Stacey Zill takes a practical and strategic, client-centered approach to legal matters. She handles complex business and health care litigation across a wide-range of issues, representing clients in matters involving corporate governance and shareholder derivative actions, investment fraud, provider and health plan payment disputes, breach of contracts and fiduciary duties, professional liability, defamation, misappropriation of trade secrets, and unfair competition.
Ms. Zill litigates at the trial and appellate levels in federal and state courts, and advocates in administrative proceedings before regulatory agencies, derivative actions, bankruptcy adversary proceedings, arbitrations and mediations. She manages all phases of the litigation process, from pre-litigation counseling and strategy through appeal. In fact, her extensive appellate experience, analyzing issues of first impression, has resulted in published opinions, including: Prospect Med. Gp., Inc. v. Northridge Emergency Med. Gp., 45 Cal. 4th 497 (2009), Coast Plaza Doctor’s Hosp. v. UHP Healthcare, 105 Cal. App. 4th 693 (2002), and Unetco Indus. Exch. v. Homestead Ins. Co., 57 Cal. App. 4th 1459 (1997).
Ms. Zill also acts as outside general counsel to various companies, being the first call when her clients need solutions to business issues with legal implications. By understanding her clients’ business, objectives and goals, Ms. Zill can provide focused, time-sensitive advice in a cost-effective manner. In this capacity, Ms. Zill manages litigation throughout the United States, provides advice and counseling on business and risk management issues, negotiates and drafts contracts, and identifies proactive solutions to eliminate or mitigate risks.
REPRESENTATIVE MATTERS
- Represented health care organizations in disputes with both contracted and non-contracted providers involving their entitlement to payment under the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act.
- Actively litigated numerous actions both at the trial court and appellate levels, representing both providers and health plans, involving multi-million dollar reimbursement claims, including successfully defending against a $40 million reimbursement action involving claims of fraud and breach of contract.
- Represented clients in litigation involving issues relating to the corporate practice of medicine, capitation delegation, physician balance billing practices, marketing, patient transfers, management arrangements, risk pools and/or fraud, waste and abuse.
- Successfully defended health plan, obtaining a complete defense award in a JAMS arbitration proceeding, against a medical group's contract and fraud claims seeking over $20 million.
- Declaratory relief action for County of Los Angeles in bankruptcy advisory proceeding concerning enforceability of a water system agreement involving a proposed 7,200 home development in Antelope Valley, with matter successfully resolved prior to trial resulting in affirming County’s right to $40 million in water and reliability fees.
- Secured judgment at trial in defense of officers and directors in corporate governance action alleging fraud, making of "secret profits" and breach of fiduciary duties; obtained a favorable settlement in shareholder derivative action against majority shareholders and members of the Board of Directors who had misappropriated assets and breached their fiduciary duties by taking dividends disguised as compensation.
- Pursued a derivative complaint on behalf of minority shareholders against corporate officers and directors who, in breach of their contractual and fiduciary obligations, attempted to “squeeze out” the minority shareholder.
- Successfully represented three defendants and one cross-complainant in a 12-day jury trial, winning a defense verdict on all charges and $850,000 on the cross-complaint, involving competing allegations of fraud with respect to a closely held corporation.
- Prevented corporate waste and theft by securing the appointment of a receiver to take control of the corporation that was seized by the majority shareholder.
- Successfully represented the tenant in a $30 million lawsuit brought by the landlord relating to the scope of the tenant’s obligation to “maintain” the property under a triple net lease.
- Secured a favorable settlement for the owner of a mobile home park against allegations of mismanagement, conversion (based on the wrongful sale of the mobile home), and Financial Elder Abuse.
- Secured the dismissal – as a discovery sanction – of a landlord-tenant complaint alleging claims for breach of contract, breach of the implied warranty of habitability, retaliatory distress, and breach of rent control regulations.
- Settled a lawsuit for investment fraud, securing an agreement for the return of all misappropriated funds.
- Obtained a defense award in week long arbitration involving a celebrity’s breach of deal memorandum claims.
- Successful prosecution of an injunctive relief action for a large transportation company involving unfair competition, improper solicitation of customers and the covenant not to compete.
- Secured a multi-million dollar settlement for a wholesaler provider of emergency roadside services following preliminary party depositions in an action for breach of contract, trade secret misappropriation and tortuous interference claims against a GE subsidiary.
EDUCATION
- J.D., cum laude, Order of the Coif (top 10%), Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, 1994
- B.A., cum laude, in Political Science with Business Administration Specialization, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS
- Lawyers of Distinction, 2024
- Top Attorneys in America Recognized for Excellence, 2023
- California's Top Attorneys 2020
- Top Women Attorneys in Southern California, Los Angeles Magazine, 2014-2021
- Top Attorneys in Southern California, Los Angeles Magazine, 2016-2020
- Southern California “Super Lawyers” in 2014-2024
- Southern California Super Lawyers “Rising Star” in 2008, and 2010
- Appointed to and Serving on the Education Committee of the California Society for Health Care Attorneys
- 2015 Nominee for The San Fernando Valley Business Journal’s Women in Business Award
- 2014 Top Women Attorneys in Southern California
PUBLICATIONS
- Extreme Caution: The HIPAA Dos and Don'ts When Responding to a Subpoena for Patient Medical Information by Stacey L. Zill The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, December 14, 2016
- Turning Over Patient Records on Request
by Stacey Zill
The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, March 1, 2016 - Don’t Lose Sleep Over Medicare Billing Intricacies of Sleep Apnea Treatments
by Andrew Selesnick and Stacey Zill
Healthcare Business Monthly, February 2016 - Continuity of Care and Provider Rights
by Andrew Selesnick and Stacey Zill
Becker's Hospital Review, July 22, 2015 - Payers are Using ERISA to Challenge Provider Reimbursement Actions
by Stacey Zill
California Health Law News, Winter 2015 - How Employers Can Avoid Hefty HIPAA Violations
by Stacey Zill & Veenita Raj
Becker's Hospital Review, June 3, 2014
SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
- Payer Litigation: What Do We Do Now?
California Society of Healthcare Attorneys' 2014 Fall Seminar Los Angeles, CA, November 7, 2014
BLOG POST
- Criminal Charges Brought in $1 Billion Alleged Medicare Fraud Scheme
July 22, 2016 - Justice Department Announces Unprecedented National Health Care Fraud Takedown
June 24, 2016 - Medicare Rolls Out Proposed Rule Altering Physician Payment Model
May 13, 2016 - Federal Court Rejects Hospitals’ Challenge to Medicare Wage Rule
April 26, 2016 - Jury Awards Aetna $37.4M in Medical Billing Fraud Case
April 20, 2016 - 70,000 More Obstacles In The Way Of Getting Providers Paid
September 29, 2015 - Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare’s Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance
June 25, 2015 - Providers Cannot Sue State Officials Over Low Medicaid Reimbursements
April 10, 2015 - California Patient Given Standing to Challenge Inflated Charges
January 12, 2015 - Potential Problems with Waiving Patient Co-Pays
October 10, 2014
MEDIA MENTIONS
- Appointment to the Health Law Committee of the Business Law Section of the California Lawyers Association, 2019-2022
- Attorneys React to Supreme Court's ACA Save Law360, June 29, 2015
- Women in Business - Nominees
San Fernando Valley Business Journal, April 20, 2015 - Decision Near on Low-Cost Mediation Service
San Fernando Valley Business Journal, April 21, 2014