Presentation of the Award by David Balfour:

Good evening,

I have the privilege and pleasure at this time to present a Life Membership Award.  The CSHA Bylaws include a provision for a Life Membership Award.  The Board of Directors may bestow this award to an individual who:   

1. Has retired from full-time practice or reached senior status in the healthcare legal profession; and
2. Has made extraordinary contributions to the Society over an extended period of years; and
3. Has provided outstanding leadership in the healthcare legal profession.

As some of you may know, Robert Sullivan has retired from full-time practice.  The Board of Directors voted to award Bob with the Life Membership Award.

Bob is well deserving of this award.  I’d like to share with you a little of Bob’s contributions to CSHA and the healthcare legal profession.

Bob was one of the original members of CSHA.  He has been a CSHA member for 42 years.

Bob attended Stanford Undergrad, and then obtained his law degree from UCLA.

Bob has focused his practice on administrative, governmental, labor and healthcare law.  He has represented clients before state and local government agencies since 1967.  He has tried approximately 300 contested adjudicatory hearings under the California Administrative Procedure Act.  He also counsels a variety of healthcare providers, including individual physicians, medical groups, ambulance companies, hospitals and mental health clinics.  He has been involved in employment disputes, medical staff credentialing, licensing and regulatory disputes.  He was selected as a “Super Lawyer” in healthcare each year from 2004-2018.

A look at a few of his representative cases is illustrative of his importance to healthcare law in California.

Skelly v. California State Personnel Board (1975 Appellate Case)

As Chief Counsel of the California State Employees Association, Bob represented Dr. Skelly in challenging the due process provisions of the State Civil Service Act.  The California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dr. Skelly, holding that state civil service employees were entitled to a pre-termination due process hearing.

Wood v. Superior Court (Medical Board) (1985 Appellate Case)

In a case involving the Medical Board’s attempts to seek enforcement of a subpoena seeking the production of a patient’s medical records from Bob's client doctor who was suspected by the Board of prescribing medication under suspicious circumstances.  The Superior Court refused to enforce the subpoena and held that “good cause” must be demonstrated before government can compel disclosure of medical records.

Bob has been a valuable member of the Hearing Officer Committee, where he has shared his wisdom and expertise.  He has been a mentor, teacher and supporter of many, many younger lawyers.

It is with great pleasure that I am able to now present Bob Sullivan with this California Society for Healthcare Attorneys Life Membership Award.

Comments of Bob Sullivan:

Thank you David, dear friend and former partner, and my heartfelt thanks to CSHA and all of you for this recognition.

Forty-two years ago I attended the first meeting at the rather seedy Hilton hotel at the then rather seedy San Francisco Airport. I had practiced healthcare law from the start – as a Deputy Attorney General, a union lawyer representing state-employed physicians and healthcare licensees, a private lawyer with my own firm, later almost 30 years at Nossaman, and now at the twilight of my career with a small firm, Rothschild Wishek and Sands, with whom I've worked for decades. In the last 30 years my practice of government and administrative law focused more heavily on healthcare, not just physicians, but medical staffs, medical groups, and virtually any problem that a healthcare licensee might find him- or herself in.

I and we have been assisted throughout this time by CSHA. The CLE and the collegiality of the group have made us better lawyers. Those of us who have been around for decades have seen the virtual explosion of healthcare law in its breadth and complexity. The virtual end of fee-for-service medicine, the advent of consolidations, medical foundations, and the alphabet soup of statutory laws that have complicated our lives – ERISA, HIPAA, HICFA, EMTALA, to say nothing of Business and Professions Code sections 805 and 809 et seq., and of course the National Practitioners Data Bank. Our lives as lawyers have alternated between terror and exhilaration.

Let me close by remembering an oracle that I have come to recognize as such. In the movie Thelma and Louise, they are on the run after Louise has killed a man trying to attack Thelma. As the police chase them Thelma from time to time calls one of them, a detective, who tries to talk them in, trying to explain the possible defenses they may have for the crimes they have committed in their flight. After one such call she talks to Louise, who explains all the reasons why the law will not protect them in some detail, and in frustration here it is: in bewilderment, Thelma responds, “God, the law is some tricky shit, isn’t it.” Brava, Thelma; you summed up our lives.

Thank you.