There were two more court hearings last week on the proposed settlement of a lawsuit between West Suburban Hospital CEO Manoj Prasad’s Resilience Healthcare and landlord Reddy Rathnaker Patlola’s Ramco LLC. But little progress was made.
The settlement, which Ramco attorney Scott Kaplan said has been agreed upon for weeks now, has been reportedly delayed due to Prasad balking at the terms. Prasad has retained his own personal attorney to represent his interests, which are said to differ significantly from those of his corporation. He subsequently dismissed his first attorney and hired a new one, Travis Richardson.
On July 28, Kaplan urged Judge Patrick Stanton to enforce the settlement he said was agreed to weeks ago.
“We’ve been at this since May,” he told the court. When Kaplan said he’d asked Resilience attorney Howard Brookins to review “red lines” of the agreement,” in order to work through differences of opinion, Brookins replied, “I just saw it.”
“I think everyone should be doing everything they can to re-open this hospital,” said Kaplan.
Stanton once again expressed his displeasure at the pace of the settlement process, telling the assemblage of lawyers, “I’ve been giving you all a lot of room to proceed.”
Stanton asked Brookins if he could “digest this and come back in two or three days.”
The judge then told Brookins and Kaplan they had until the next hearing three days later on Friday to figure out if they would “fight about this or work together” to reach a settlement. “You gotta find time with your clients so they can digest the terms.”
Friday afternoon when court convened, Stanton looked at the large screen where the attorneys were appearing via Zoom.
“Ready to go forward?” he asked. No, Brookins told the judge, they would be fighting it out, not between Ramco and Resilience, but between Resilience and its co-owner, Prasad.
“It appears we’re going to have to go forward with a hearing,” Brookins said, saying that Prasad would not agree to the proposed settlement.
After a bit of back and forth and checking on personal calendars, Stanton set an Aug. 25 hearing date, giving Brookins and Richardson two weeks to work things out between Prasad and Resilience, and Ramco and Kaplan a week after that to go over the details of what Prasad and Resilience agreed upon. If, in fact, any agreement can be reached.
In the meantime, Stanton told Kaplan to go forward with filing his motion to have the judge enforce the settlement.
Kaplan has already filed a proposed settlement with the court. Kaplan noted in that filing that a “settlement in principle” had been reached following “a full afternoon and evening” of negotiations between the parties on May 29.
Kaplan said he wrote up a draft settlement agreement and provided a copy to Resilience on June 3. He is alleging that Ramco’s efforts to finalize an agreement have “been met with delay and bad faith efforts by the Resilience parties.”
Resilience, Kaplan alleged, has “expended considerable efforts in an attempt to walk away from key terms previously agreed to during the May 29 settlement conference.”
Just how much cash might be involved in an eventual settlement was suggested during a day long court hearing on May 8. The amount of money at issue is likely well into the tens of millions of dollars.
Wednesday Journal read through the 500 pages of the transcript of that proceeding recently. Patlola’s attorney Scott Kaplan said Prasad had directed the transfer “of at least $35 million from the hospitals to Westlaw and refused to provide additional information as to the use of those funds or information as to where those funds were transferred to.”
“Those hospitals closed because of the gross mismanagement and misappropriation of funds by Dr. Manoj Prasad who exercised complete control over these hospital entities,” Kaplan said.
Not even the CFO of Weiss and West Sub Hospitals, Kaplan said, could “see where tens of millions of dollars were going.”
Patlola testified that Prasad arranged what he called numerous “unauthorized” transfers from Resilience Healthcare’s bank accounts to the Westlaw LLC bank account controlled solely by Prasad.
Prasad testified in May that he has never denied Patlola access to the account. Patlola testified that Prasad had in fact denied him access to the one account holding all the large transfers to West Sub.
Those transfers included $20 million, $4 million and $10 million between Jan. 31, 2024 and May 2, 2025, and numerous other transfers continuing up to May of this year.
Patlola says millions more have gone to Prasad since then. “Do you have any knowledge as to whether or not West Suburban Medical Center is still receiving payments for medical procedures that previously occurred,” he was asked at the May 8 court hearing,
“Absolutely,” Patlola answered. “They’re receiving closer to $700,000 a week. $680 to $700,000 per week they’re receiving right now.”
What bills are being paid with that income is not known. Kaplan disclosed at the July 28 hearing that Prasad had finally paid $60,000 toward three of seven accounts West Sub has with Commonwealth Edison, ahead of a final shut off notice. The sprawling medical center remains closed due to none of its 28 elevators working.