People v. Rehman

• Decision Date: 02 August 1967
• Docket Number: Cr. 9534
• Citation: 253 Cal.App.2d 119,61 Cal.Rptr. 65
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Jerome REHMAN, Mark Sincoff, Richard Alfred Gorman and Charles Edwin Symes, Defendants and Appellants.

Page 65

61 Cal.Rptr. 65

253 Cal.App.2d 119

The PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Jerome REHMAN, Mark Sincoff, Richard Alfred Gorman and Charles Edwin Symes, Defendants and Appellants.

Cr. 9534.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 1, California.

Aug. 2, 1967.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 31, 1967.

Hearing Denied Sept. 27, 1967.

Ramsey & Emlein, A. L. Wirin and Fred Okrand, Los Angeles, for defendants and appellants.

Thomas C. Lynch, Atty. Gen., William E. James, Asst. Atty. Gen., and George J. Roth, Deputy Atty. Gen., for plaintiff and respondent.

KINCAID, Associate Justice pro tem. ^*

The appellants Jerome Rehman, Mark Sincoff, Richard Alfred Gorman and Charles Edwin Symes, with several others, were accused by the Grand Jury of Los Angeles County, on June 14, 1962, in a two-count indictment. The case went to jury trial only as to amended count two charging appellants with the crime of conspiracy, in violation of section 182, Penal Code of California, a felony, in that they did wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously conspire and agree together, and with other persons, to commit acts injurious to the public health and to violate sections 240 (assault), 242 (battery) and 484 (theft) of the Penal Code, sections 2141 (practicing healing arts without a license) and 650 (unlawful splitting of fees, etc.) of the Business and Professions Code, section 556 (fraudulent claim under insurance contract) of the Insurance Code, sections 10675 (fraudulent birth certificate) and 1417 (licensing provisions and adopted rules and regulations as to hospitals) of the Health and Safety Code and of the rules promulgated by the State Department of Health as contained in Title 17, Administrative Code.

Sixteen overt acts were also alleged as a part of count two. ¹

Penal Code of California, section 182, provides: 'If two or more persons conspire: 1. To commit any crime. * * * 5. To commit any act injurious to the public health, to public morals, or to permit or obstruct justice, or the due administration of the laws. * * * They are punishable as follows: * * *.'

A lengthy trial resulted in verdicts of guilty as to each defendant as charged in amended count two of the indictment. Motions for new trial were made and argued by each and were denied. Sentence followed, defendants remaining at liberty on bail. Each defendant appealed from the order made denying his motion for a new trial and from the judgment.

Defendants' evidence at trial was by way of denial of any unlawful act or intent, but on this appeal it seems apparent that they do not dispute the sufficiency of the evidence to support the judgment. They rely for reversal on the claimed prejudicial errors that: (1) Section 182, subdivision 5 of the Penal Code is so unconstitutionally vague as to fail to serve as a definition of criminal conduct; (2) it is not a crime to conspire to violate section 1417 of the Health and Safety Code; (3) special verdicts should have been submitted to the jury for determination; (4) evidence obtained pursuant to a search warrant and used at the trial violated their constitutional rights; (5) in instructing the jury regarding hypodermic injections; (6) excluding evidence that certain witnesses had filed civil actions against defendants after testifying against them; (7) the testimony of prosecution expert witnesses that surgery or hospitalization of certain patients was in their opinion not indicated, and (8) the district attorney was guilty of misconduct in his investigation in that he turned satisfied patients into prosecution witnesses.

The reporter's transcript herein contains almost 22,000 pages of testimony and the evidence is, as succinctly as possible, summarized as follows:

Jerome Rehman is and since 1956 has been a licensed doctor of osteopathy. Thereafter, Rehman caused to be formed and had a controlling interest in various corporate and noncorporate enterprises among which were Metropolitan Enterprises, Incorporated, which owned and operated Bixby Knolls Community Hospital; Avalon Village Medical Clinic (unincorporated); Pacific Medical Clinic (unincorporated); Service X-Ray, a corporation which operated the X-ray section of Bixby Knolls Hospital; Harbor X-Ray Service, a corporation, which had charge of the X-ray services performed at Avalon Village Medical Group and Pacific Medical Clinic. It also owned Rainbow Ambulance Service; Metropolitan Medical Laboratories, Inc., which operated a clinical laboratory at Avalon Village Medical Clinic; HOAP, Incorporated, a non-profit prepaid medical plan; Southwestern Acceptance Corporation, formed to act as a personal loan property broker and for the purchase of conditional sales contracts and other notes and obligations; Gerald Rentals, a corporation, organized to rent wheel chairs, crutches, hospital beds and similar equipment, and Purchasers Market, Incorporated, which was formed for the purpose of obtaining a license to sell wholesale drugs.

Mark Sincoff is an attorney licensed by the State of California. He acted as full time attorney for Rehman and his enterprises for a salary of $1,000 per month and $500 per month for expenses. He had an office at the Avalon Village Clinic. Sincoff was president of Metropolitan Enterprises, Incorporated, owner of the hospital. Either he, or Rehman, had the power to sign for any corporate purpose jointly with Mrs. Rehman who was secretary-treasurer. Corporate meetings for Metropolitan Enterprises, Incorporated, and for all the other corporations were usually held weekly. Sincoff was an officer in Gerald Rentals, and was the president of Purchasers Market, Incorporated. He was vice-president of Harbor X-Ray. He listed himself on an application for a municipal license as president of Service X-Ray Corporation.

Sincoff went to Pacific Medical Clinic on several occasions and to Bixby Knolls Hospital for fifteen minutes a day. He would usually be called to the hospital for a particular problem or to look at a contract. He would pick up the locked box containing the money and receipts from the Avalon Clinic and bring it to the Bixby Knolls Hospital at least every other day, and occasionally from the Pacific Clinic. He hired and fired employees and worked out salary arrangements. He negotiated bill disputes with patients. He rode the ambulance as an attendant on two or three occasions and considered himself a jack-of-all trades, doing a 'little of this and a little of that.'

Richard Alfred Gorman was employed as a hospital orderly and unregistered nurse. He had been a corpsman in the navy hospital corps. During that duty he was a surgical scrub nurse and instrument nurse and took care of patients. While there he did suturing on patients. He took a premedical course at a college for two and one-half years. His first job on coming to California was for Rehman at Bixby Knolls Hospital. He worked as an orderly and as a circulating nurse or scrub nurse in the operating room. He was present in the operating room at times when Rehman was the only doctor present other than the anaesthetist. He also stayed alone when no doctor was present on many nights a week at one of the other of the two clinics. He also stayed at the hospital at night once every ten days. On a few occasions, when no doctors were at the hospital, nurses would call him to see patients. He would see the patients and then call Rehman or whatever doctor was at the clinic.

On one occasion when a three year-old girl was brought into the hospital with, apparently, convulsions, Gorman came into the room wearing an operating gown and cap with a mask across his face, put his hand on the child's neck, and told the mother and the grandmother, '* * * 'I am Dr. Gorman. I have seen lots of cases like this. After the child's temperature goes down, she will be all right. '' He sutured patients. He gave spinal anesthetic. He started intravenous feedings by inserting the hypodermic needle. He telephoned Dr. Rehman's preoperative instructions for medication to be given patients by hypodermic in preparation for anesthesia.

Charles Edwin Symes was hired by Dr. Rehman in 1961 as chief X-ray technician. He had formerly been a licensed chiropractor but was unlicensed as such during the period here in question. He was listed as vice-president of Service X-Ray. He was chief X-ray technician in charge of the two clinics and the hospital. He hired and trained the X-ray personnel. He received ten per cent of the gross charges for X-rays taken at the three places less the moneys paid as wages to the X-ray personnel. He received additional compensation for taking EKG's at the hospital and for the time spent in soliciting chiropractors who were promised 'kickbacks' to sent patients to the hospital. He inserted hypodermic needles in giving intravenous pyelograms and took many unnecessary X-rays under general instructions from Dr. Rehman.

Because of the voluminous record no attempt is made here to detail what occurred in connection with each patient considered at the trial. Some of the examples testified to are now set forth for illustration as to the effects of the conspiracy on several of those patients.

Mrs. Helen Edwards had been in an automobile collision and injured her shoulder. She went to see Bernard Steuber, a chiropractor, who examined her briefly and then sent her to another doctor for X-rays. The second doctor sent her back to Steuber who then sent her to Bixby Knolls Hospital. She went there to have her neck and shoulder examined. Rehman admitted her into the hospital. A consultant, Dr. Fiske, examined her and recommended a thyroid test and some medication. Many X-rays were taken. During her sixteen days' stay in the hospital, Rehman operated on her twice--once was a D & C and cervical biopsy--the other was a uterine suspension, an appendectomy, an adhesionotomy by way of an exploratory laparotomy (mid-line incision from the navel to the public area).

Dr. Arthur D....