In this episode, hosts Brad and Michael outline how ownership works from an operational perspective. Tune in as we unravel the story of practice owner who begins to question the ownership and payment structure when he does not see the fruits of his labor. Discover how one doctor’s failure to maintain his administrative duties exposes the harsh realities of unmet expectations in a partnership. Learn why it is critical to understand the financial obligations of a partnerships, and the preventative measures you should take to avoid litigation and partnership breakdowns.
Listen to the full episode using the player below, or by visiting one of the links below. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, email us at info@byrdadatto.com.
Transcript
*The below transcript has been edited for readability.
Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. Legal issues simplified through real client stories and real-world experiences, creating simplicity in 3, 2, 1.
Brad: Welcome back to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. I’m your host, Brad Adatto, with my co-host, Michael Byrd.
Michael: As a business and health care law firm, we meet a lot of interesting people and learn their amazing stories. This season, we are riding the emotional rollercoaster of the different types of crises that can arise in the operating season of a business. Our theme, Brad, is Running a Business.
Brad: Now, Michael, as we’ve said in other shows so far this year, that’s just one season. What are all the seasons?
Michael: We have the building season, starting a business, operating season, next season in our podcast we’ll be talking about the scaling season, growing a business and then the buying and selling season.
Brad: Perfect. Well, done, sir. Now Michael, before we get started [00:01:00] with today’s story, I’m going to pivot from our little mini stories we’ve been doing all season, and I want to bring a longstanding tradition of discussing TV shows that we love on our show.
Michael: No.
Brad: What if it has to do with ‘Breaking Bad’ references?
Michael: Okay. That’s not fair. You know that I’m a fan of ‘Breaking Bad’ and that I even love the sister show, ‘Better Call Saul’, even more.
Brad: Now, Michael, since you are a resident expert on both shows, can you give a super brief description for those to have no idea what we’re talking about, about these two shows?
Michael: I’ll start with my favorite first, Brad. ‘Better Call Saul’ is a TV show about an attorney named Jimmy McGill., who is trying to find his way as an attorney under the big shadow cast by his famous brother, Chuck McGill. There was tension with Jimmy being a hustler growing up, and then also wanting to do good, and eventually throughout the show ended up changing his name to Saul Goodman, which played a part [00:02:00] when you’ve seen ‘Breaking Bad’, and we learned about this journey of him as an attorney, ultimately representing Walter White and other criminals in Albuquerque. Now, ‘Breaking Bad’ is a TV show that actually was before ‘Better Call Saul’, about a science teacher named Walter White, who turns to the criminal world to help repay for his cancer treatments. He made meth, Brad.
Brad: Yeah, he did. And we did a whole show called “MSO Breaking Bad”. And we actually went in a little more detail back then.
Michael: We’ve been really drug heavy with our conversations this season for some reason. Where are you going with this?
Brad: Well, what if I told you that being a scientist doesn’t always make you smarter.
Michael: Kind of like you being an attorney does that make you smarter.
Brad: Ouch. Hey, Kennedy, can you just make sure that gets cut? That’s just mean right there. Well, I read an article recently where art became life in Long Island, New York. A gentleman who wanted to be like Walter White, [00:03:00] apparently, he was really good at science, getting that science down, but apparently was not very intelligent.
Michael: I don’t want to play spoilers here, but did he blow himself up?
Brad: You know what, sort of. He called the cops about an alleged break-in, in his business, the Quantitative Laboratories LLC.
Michael: Creative name for a lab from a scientist. Okay.
Brad: Well, when the police arrived for this break-in, it was really hard for them to simply just investigate the broken glass outside because they couldn’t ignore the mounds of drugs inside.
Michael: Oh no.
Brad: Oh yes. Ultimately, the police found over a hundred pieces of lab equipment, $40K in cash, meth producing chemicals, an array of drugs; including GHB, meth and ketamine.
Michael: Was there any word of an RV parked outside?
Brad: Ha, good ‘Breaking Bad’ reference. No mention of an RV.
Michael: Okay. I cannot believe that you sucked me in and got me to discuss TV shows again. [00:04:00] We were doing so well this year, but let’s get to it, Brad. Let’s get to our story today. Hopefully there’s no RVs or mounds of drugs that we’re talking about.
Brad: Well, I don’t think there are, but we’ll get into today’s story. So, our first character is a doctor named Dr. Pinkman.
Michael: Okay. Audience members who don’t know, Brad is now bringing ‘Breaking Bad’ characters into our main story. Jesse Pinkman is Walter White’s former student who was not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Brad: No, he wasn’t.
Michael: But he partnered with Walter White to build a drug empire. I’m also objecting, Brad, as you’re using names of characters that we used in that prior show, ‘MSO Breaking Bad’ seems really lazy to me, but I guess, I guess go on.
Brad: Well, I figured I could get away with it only for the fact because you love ‘Breaking Bad’ so much. But maybe it was lazy me. All right, back to Dr. Pinkman, worked for the Heisenberg Health Care Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and [00:05:00] it was initially formed by Dr. White, Dr. Hank Schrader and Dr. Skylar White. Now, Hank was Walter’s brother-in-Law, and Skylar was his wife. So, Dr. Pinkman was the only owner who was not related to the founders of the organization.
Michael: So, all of these characters are from ‘Breaking Bad,’ you’re going deep with ‘Breaking Bad’ today. I’m just, at this point, I’m going to roll with it, but I’m starting to get an ominous feel about our story today.
Brad: That’s probably a good sign there that you’re catching on. Now, Dr. Pinkman has been working at the organization for years and has been an owner for about five years. Dr. Pinkman makes a lot of money for Heisenberg Healthcare Company, but he was always complaining that he was not paid enough.
Michael: Okay. Well, I’m curious now, so is it just these four physicians that you’ve mentioned?
Brad: Actually, no. It’s a good question, Michael. Actually, there’s a bunch of employed physicians. They had mid-levels who worked there in the practice, and they had locations all across the state.
Michael: Okay. You used the term mid-levels, Brad, [00:06:00] for those not familiar with the term, that generally is meaning physician assistants and nurse practitioners and PAs and NPs. These are professionals who, like physicians, can assist with the diagnosis and treatment plan and help and treat patients based on proper supervision.
Brad: Great. Good catch there, Michael. And they had a, a large support staff to compliment all these providers. Dr. Pinkman was growing his practice and quickly became one of the number one provider, if not the number one provider. But he still never felt like he got paid enough.
Michael: Well, how did they compensate Dr. Pinkman?
Brad: All right. So, all the physician owners were based on, they were paid based on their personal production and of course the ancillary revenue. Each physician had an employment agreement that paid them on their personal production under what we call an Eat What You Kill model. And as it relates, the ancillary revenue they attained from they had a lab, they had an MRI, they had x-ray machines, these physicians’ owners received distributions of the profits of Heisenberg Health Care based on their pro rata [00:07:00] share of ownership.
Michael: Okay. That’s a lot to unpack, Brad. Let me first talk about this. Eat What You Kill model that you referenced. So let me start with what it’s not so everybody has the context. So, a lot of times with physician employees and even partners, their comp system will be a base salary. And particularly with employees, they may have incentive comp that kicks in when they reach a level of production. An Eat What You Kill model almost feels like you’re your own little business in the sense that you track the revenues that you produce as in this case partner. And then you get allocated certain expenses and there’s a bunch that goes into that. But ultimately, you eat what you kill. You get to keep what’s left over after you paid whatever has been agreed upon. But you mentioned another term. You mentioned ancillary revenues, and I know that unless we happen to have some health care attorneys [00:08:00] out there, that that may have just kind of glossed, been glossed over. Talk a little bit about ancillary revenues and why these were distributed you said on a pro rata share of ownership.
Brad: Ancillary revenues will often be that. That’s not based on their personal production. So that could be based on, again, MRIs or x-rays and labs, things in which a doctor’s referring to someone else to take care of that. Now, because a doctor themselves are not taking care of it, there’s a bunch of rules that you have to abide by, especially when you have federal payers, which in this particular practice was involved. And these federal payers can be Medicare or Medicaid or Tricare or other fairly funded programs. And when it comes to these programs, just because I refer the most, doesn’t mean I get paid the most. There are certain federal laws out there, some of you might have heard of Stark. Well, that’s the Federal Anti-Referral Law.
There’s another law out there called the Federal Anti-Kickback Law, which is another law that really prohibits [00:09:00] people getting kickbacks for referrals. And both of these, both the Stark and Anti-Kickback Law have certain exemptions that you can use in Stark we call them Stark Exceptions, and a Kickback becomes, we call them Safe Harbors. And when it comes to these types of practices, there’s ways to legally build these ownerships and allow them to receive funds from it. But mostly the easiest way to summarize it all, it has to be generally based on your pro rata share of ownership. And that’s why they couldn’t just receive whatever they referred.
Michael: Okay. Okay. Sorry for the sidebar there. Let’s get back to our story. So, I am surprised that Dr. Pinkman was complaining about how he was paid. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. He’s on an Eat What You Kill model, which rewards you the most for your own production. I mean, it seems like those who produce the most get paid the most at Heisenberg Health Care.
Brad: Yeah, Michael, and that’s correct. But Dr. Pinkman always felt like he was owed more money and it started to appear [00:10:00] that he started not trusting the fact that all these other owners were related.
Michael: Okay, did Dr. Pinkman have access to the financial records?
Brad: Yes, and the group had quarterly board meetings, annual shareholder meetings, additionally they produced monthly reports showing the production of each physician, mid-level, all the revenue from the ancillaries. But even with all this information, Dr. Pinkman was complaining that he was underpaid.
Michael: A lot is not making sense here, Brad and this is the operating season. So, I’m starting to get the picture that we had a crisis.
Brad: Your assumption is correct. As one of the employed physicians had been a disaster for Heisenberg Health Care, and we’ll just call him Dr. Gus Fring.
Michael: Okay, another character from Breaking Bad and he was a scary character. He was bad. Why was Dr. Gus Fring from our story today an issue?
Brad: Yeah, good question. He kept failing to complete [00:11:00] his medical records timely. He failed to complete the billing for the medical practice that they needed to bill for him. And he generally just seemed disorganized.
Michael: Well, he’s definitely not a drug lord and murderer like on the show, so that’s the good news.
Brad: Good point.
Michael: Did Heisenberg Health Care believe that patient care was also an issue?
Brad: No. Actually, Dr. Gus Fring was loved by his patients and delivered great care, but he just didn’t get to his bills and didn’t get to his charts and didn’t timely go through the stuff that the practice needed to do so it could get paid.
Michael: Yeah. We’ve had a few doctors over the years that just didn’t seem to be wired to handle these administrative responsibilities. They come and typically have this mindset that they’re doctors, the most important thing is to do proper care for the patients, which is the most important thing. Correct. However, this is unfortunately a [00:12:00] massive problem on both the business side and the compliance side. Yeah. I mean, if you think from a compliance perspective, you’re required to keep updated medical records. And so, whether you’re working for a practice, or on your own, or a part of a hospital system, it’s really important, and you create risks not complying with medical board requirements on keeping that. Now, from a business perspective, it’s pretty straightforward, Brad. If you don’t bill, you don’t get paid.
Brad: Wow. Those are great points there about the business side of health care. Wait, Kennedy, just strike that from the podcast. We can’t make Michael look that good. All right, back to our story. Over the last few months at Heisenberg Health Care, they would have these board meetings and they would discuss Dr. Gus Fring – well, he was losing money and what corrective action should they take to remedy the situation? But basically after 18 months, nothing seemed to be working. So, they just finally decided just to fire Gus because he couldn’t get him to complete his administrative side of the practice. It just wasn’t working.
Michael: I’m sure it was a hard decision if he was beloved by the patients, but necessary for the practice. What does Dr. Gus Fring have to do with Dr. Pinkman?
Brad: Everything. Gus was a major drain on the profitability of this practice, so much that it ate into a substantial portion of their profits as they were first off overpaying Gus and then not billing for him, which led them to be very upside down on Gus’s revenue. And additionally, Gus heavily used mid-levels to help cater to his patients which added to the overall expenses to the practice.
Michael: So, if I’m hearing this right, Gus had a very high salary. He was paid a lot. He had very low revenues. because [00:14:00] he wouldn’t bill for his work. He had a lot of people helping him and they got paid a lot, and there were no revenues coming in from them either. That’s not a good equation for the business.
Brad: No, it’s not.
Michael: And I would say this, for an owner of the practice and they’re assuming the risk of employees. I mean, the flip side is they get to share the upside and the profitability, going back to your ancillary revenue. There can be other employed providers that create a lot of profit for a practice. But this sounds like the wrong kind of force multiplier.
Brad: Exactly. As such, at the end of the year everyone’s distributions were impacted. Dr. Pinkman was furious, and he only wanted the founders to actually bear the burden of this financial impact.
Michael: And so just to restate, the founders being the family partners, right?
Brad: Yeah.
Michael: Okay. So why did he think these founders should bear this burden?
Brad: Well, Dr. Pinkman believes since Dr. White was the CEO [00:15:00] and did not fire Gus fast enough, and everyone else was relayed to Dr. White, Dr. Pinkman should not have to suffer the poor decision-making o of running this business. And all the other partners should have to split the loss between themselves.
Michael: I’m confused. Brad. I thought you said Dr. Pinkman was on the board and had access to all the same information.
Brad: Yeah, you were listening well, good job. It apparently didn’t matter to him.
Michael: Well, did Dr. Pinkman ever object to them keeping Gus during one of these board meetings?
Brad: No, not. There’s no evidence of that. And additionally, Dr. Pinkman felt like the practice was also underpaying him on his personal collections. As Dr. Pickman started to argue that he should receive a hundred percent of the collections he worked and not have to share any of it with, to help cover his expenses.
Michael: Well, as I explained earlier, in an Eat What You Kill model, a doctor does not get to take home everything a doctor collects, they have to cover their expenses. So, what made [00:16:00] Dr. Pinkman think he deserved all of his collections?
Brad: You’ll love this answer. Because it was unfair that he was working this hard and didn’t get all this money.
Michael: The no fair excuse? With five kids, I’m very well versed on this excuse. Of course, this is when they were little kids. not so much grown adults working. And as you’ve heard me say many times in response to that; the fair only happens once a year in Texas. It’s in September. So, I definitely see the crisis bubbling. What happened?
Brad: Well, clearly the parties didn’t have alignment as it relates to how to deal with this loss. And unfortunately, it boiled over into the courtroom as Dr. Pinkman ended up suing Heisenberg Health Care for breach of contract and all his partners for breach of their fiduciary duty to him as a shareholder,
Michael: I think a lawsuit qualifies as a crisis. Well, let’s go into a commercial. And on the [00:17:00] other side, talk about how we responded to these threats.
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Brad: Welcome back to Legal 123s with ByrdAdatto. I’m your host Brad Adatto, with my co-host, Michael Byrd. Now Michael, this season our theme is Running a Business and we’re talking about real client problems that pop up during the operating season of a business. Now, Michael, we just talked about how to respond to litigation on other shows earlier this season. So, let’s first kind of double click and outline, how does [00:18:00] ownership typically work?
Michael: This is important because we saw a definite disconnect on expectations from our hero, or maybe he’s not our hero in the story, but the problem with Dr. Pinkman. So the first concept to ownership is so basic, but you have to understand that you’re taking a risk.
Brad: No, I’m out. Wait, I’m leaving right now. I have to take a risk as an owner.
Michael: We’re many years into this, Brad, so you’ve been taking a risk for a long time.
Brad: I had no idea. Thank you for letting me know.
Michael: If there’s not enough money to pay the bills and you’re an owner, you don’t get paid.
Brad: This is worse than I ever thought.
Michael: I know, I know. I’m glad you’re getting educated while we’re educating our audience, Brad. And we see this sometimes Brad, especially in the medical practice scenario where owners have an employee mindset. Like, there’s like, I do this, I deserve this. I’m entitled to this. I’m entitled to a hundred percent of my collections. [00:19:00] They think that they should be paid based on their work. As I said, they’re entitled. But the reality is that the owners, and I’ve mentioned this already, they enjoy both the fruit of the profits of the practice, but they’re also the last to get fed figuratively when losing money – or in eat what you kill, you get to eat last. And so when it comes to profits, these are most commonly distributed according to the percentage of ownership. And so what you might have seen here, probably did see, you can confirm is, and you get this Eat What You Kill model that covers your own personal production. But there’s all these ancillary revenues, which include the other employees that generate profits, and you get distributions like you mentioned earlier, according to ownership. And so, depending on the type of entity and maybe even the model of the practice, you’ll sometimes see that profits are distributed based on some factor other than ownership. [00:20:00] But as we know here, there was actual compliance reasons that they were doing it and according to ownership. But Brad, this is one aspect of being a partner shareholder for a medical practice. Talk about kind of the management side. How is that practice managed?
Brad: Yeah. And so, audience members, as you can imagine, you can be an owner of a business, and that doesn’t mean that you’re actually doing the governance. So, a lot of times your owners will appoint people called board of directors or even officers. Now, those individuals, your board members and your officers, they serve at the pleasure of – the board serves at the pleasure of the shareholders in this case. And the board members appoint officers who serve at the pleasure of the board, so they kind of all kinds of talk to each other. And these individuals are the ones that should be helping to make the business decisions and the advancement. That doesn’t mean they’re doing the day-to-day grind of doing the checkbooks, but they’re making sure they [00:21:00] have the right person to do that. They’re helping implement the vision and the strategy related to running that business. and they’re making sure that they’re doing good governance throughout that process. Now, Michael, as part of the lawsuit, Dr. Pinkman claimed that these other directors breached their fiduciary duty, so I think we need to jump into that vocabulary word. What is a fiduciary duty?
Michael: Okay. I feel trapped audience, I don’t know how to answer this question without getting into the legal a little bit here. I guess this is legal podcast.
Brad: Yes, it is legal podcast.
Michael: I do have some wiggle room.
Brad: It’s called the Legal 123s.
Michael: Okay. Well, so that means I simplify somehow something that’s not simple. Fiduciary duty refers to basically a relationship between someone that’s deemed to be a fiduciary and the beneficiary on whose behalf, and the fiduciary acts. So, the fiduciary accepts a legal responsibility, and they have these duties of care, duty of loyalty, good faith, confidentiality [00:22:00] and more, and there’s to serve in the best interests of a beneficiary. And of course, well, maybe not, of course, a board member, a director, and an officer, that part of that role carries this responsibility, this fiduciary responsibility. And so, what I’ve learned is that – in one of the arguments in the lawsuit by Dr. Pinkman was that the other family members as officers or directors, that they breached their fiduciary duty of loyalty to the owners and that they didn’t act in their best interest.
And so, I want to pause for a minute, Brad, because that is what the allegation of the lawsuit was. It’s important to understand that fiduciary duty is a state law driven doctrine. And I’m going to try to keep us out of the weeds, but there are nuances as to whether a director in a corporation owes this fiduciary duty to the shareholder [00:23:00] or they owe the fiduciary duty to the corporation itself. And it does matter in a lawsuit, if, depending on how the state law is written, and also common medical practices are set up as partnerships as the legal entity. And there it’s more straightforward a partner owes this fiduciary duty to the other partners. So, Brad, talk a little bit about the ways the board can act for the benefit of the owners as good fiduciaries.
Brad: Yeah. And on that point, audience members and to Michael’s point about the fiduciary piece, first off is understand is that someone can sue you for everything. But to Michael’s point, that doesn’t mean it’s actually a true fiduciary duty that’s owed. But for those that do, let’s talk about if the entire board does have a fiduciary duty, what are the things they can think about to make sure they’re acting like that? So, they should monitor the business by discussing analyzing financial boards. They should be paying attention to the funding and expenditures and their revenues and debts and cash flow, and [00:24:00] with this information, the board should exercise what they call the good faith judgment as it relates to the appropriate oversight needed for running this particular business. And if the board is active in following what it believes to be the best course of the business, it’s acting for the benefit of these owners of the business. As such, if they make a bad business decision, it hurts, but that they shouldn’t be liable as a board or as officers for making a bad business decision. And therefore they shouldn’t be a breach of their fiduciary or their obligation to the owners just because they made a boo-boo there, Michael.
Michael: I mean, there’s a long longstanding doctrine. It’s called the Business Judgment Rule, that it basically protects a fiduciary, a board member, an officer from honest mistakes and for good faith decisions based on their business judgment, so making a mistake is not a breach of a fiduciary duty. Now, what’s interesting, and you [00:25:00] mentioned this earlier, you said if you’re active, well, an inactive board, which we see that in practices boards that don’t meet. You can’t oftentimes in states hide behind the business judgment rule if you’re doing nothing. And so, activity does matter. And so, in today’s story, Heisenberg Health Care was, and providing these monthly reports. And you’ve mentioned several times they were active. So why, I’m curious, didn’t Dr. Pinkman raise his concerns at these board meetings?
Brad: It’s a great question because what we’ve eventually learned is he actually didn’t understand how P and L worked at the practice, even though he had been an owner for five years.
Michael: And unfortunately, this is also more common than you would think and that’s – curious, he might be the one risking his breach of fiduciary duty but protected by the business judgment rule. But a P and L at its most high level is…
Brad: What does P and L mean?
Michael: [00:26:00] Profit and loss statement.
Brad: Oh, good. Thank you. I didn’t know.
Michael: And oh, well, you’re learning a lot today, Brad. This is so good. This is so helpful for our partnership.
Brad: Taking notes.
Michael: Yeah. So, the P and L basically tracks the money in and the money out, revenues that come in from a global perspective, right? From all sources, all the revenues, and then all sources of expenses down to you get to the profit, the leftover, the net income is the term you’ll see from an accounting perspective, and so that’s kind of the gist of the P and L.
Brad: You’re right. The profit being better than the losses, right?
Michael: Yes, I’ve heard that. That’s good.
Brad: Good. Okay, good. I’m doing great now. And so, as the losses started adding Dr. Pinkman actually didn’t understand the overall impact that Dr. Gus Fring was really having on their practice, which causes ripple effect that Dr. Pinkman thought the owners must be stealing from him. And therefore, Dr. Pinkman was owed more money, again, including a hundred percent of his [00:27:00] collections. And Michael, let’s take kind of a little step back here. But Michael, we talk about this a lot, about how collections really work in a medical practice. Maybe you can discuss that.
Michael: Let’s double click on the Eat What You Kill that we talked about earlier. So, kind of think of a subcategory of a P and L where we’re just isolating on Dr. Pinkman in this example, just to have someone to picture. And when we talk about collections, an Eat What You Kill model actually has his revenues minus his expenses. Well, his revenues are going to be collections that come in the door based on work off his back. And so, oftentimes the other sources of revenue wouldn’t be isolated on this kind of single sheet of a kind of Pinkman and a P and L.
Brad: Right. And these collections, you remember, audience member is from what’s collected, not build and not having to do with any of the other ancillary revenue, purely that. Now Michael, you did mention since his story is talking [00:28:00] about Eat What You Kill, one of the important elements of an Eat What You Kill is first the collections, but how the overhead actually impacts then the model and much less the collections himself. Can you of kind talk about that?
Michael: Yeah. If I stopped right where we were, then Dr. Pinkman would be great. He wants a hundred percent of all the money he collects. So, he wants to stop at that top line on his individual sheet. The problem is that, again, there are expenses associated with that. And when you do Eat What You Kill, you’re allocating those expenses. And so there might be direct expenses like any salary that he’s taking or malpractice insurance for him, or other direct expenses. And then there’s shared overhead that may be his portion of the rent that’s maybe done according to ownership or per person. And then there might be indirect things like per use, like if he’s using more gauze in his procedures or other supplies, then you got to figure out a way to, to allocate [00:29:00] that. And they would’ve, I’m sure they pre-agreed to this, and that’s how the overhead side works.
Brad: Well, done. It’s almost like you’ve talked about this before. So, to summarize for audience, Dr. Pinkman did not want to share as an owner when it comes to the losses of the business. And for every dollar that he collected on his behalf, Dr. Pinkman wanted his share, he did not want to share with his partners his revenue.
Michael: Oh man. So, what happened with Dr. Pinkman and his lawsuit against Heisenberg Health Care?
Brad: Well, we went on to an all-day mediation, at which point we finally had some alignment. As Dr. Pitman’s litigation attorney actually brought a corporate attorney and a CPA to the mediation, the mediator seemed to indicate that the team was able to shed some light to everyone in the room as to how these matters started to work and we were able to settle the matter.
Michael: So is Dr. Pinkman still with the practice.
Brad: No. As part of the settlement, the parties did separate, and Dr. Pinkman left to go start his own practice.
Michael: Wow. I hope he figured out P and L’s, Brad, and how to properly compensate himself because it’s not going to go well if he’s keeping a hundred percent of what comes in. [00:30:00]
Brad: Yeah. I don’t think it worked well for him since he’s no longer at that practice that he started and is now employed by a hospital, just where he belongs.
Michael: Okay, Brad, let’s wrap it up. When you named these characters today after Breaking Bad, I was expecting the crisis to involve a meth lab. or some level of criminal activity. So, I guess I’m relieved that this was just a story of bad business. But even bad businesses can lead to a major crisis costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses and fighting over unmet expectations.
Brad: Correct you are Michael. Guess what, Michael? Next Wednesday, we’ll be back and address a crisis when a client gets a cease-and-desist letter on their trademark. Thanks again for joining us today. And remember, if you like this episode, please subscribe, make sure to give us a five-star rating and share with your friends.
Michael: You can also sign up for the ByrdAdatto Newsletter by going to our website at byrdadatto.com.
Outro: ByrdAdatto is providing this podcast as a public service. This podcast is for educational purposes only. [00:31:00] This podcast does not constitute legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by ByrdAdatto. The views expressed by guests are their own, and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please consult with an attorney on your legal issues.
