M. Katherine Strahan

Katherine Strahan is a trial lawyer with twenty-five years of experience in complex commercial and managed care litigation. She has spent her entire career representing managed care organizations (MCOs) in business and healthcare disputes and has extensive experience representing employers, group insurers and claims administrators in disputes involving health, disability, life and accidental death and dismemberment benefits, including claims under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and insurance-bad-faith laws.

As part of her managed care practice, Ms. Strahan routinely handles contract, business-practices, and provider-prompt-pay disputes in court and arbitration proceedings. These matters often involve claims arising out of managed care agreements, third-party administrative services contracts, out-of-network reimbursement or claims handling practices, verification of coverage or benefits, and plan coverage provisions. In handling these disputes, Ms. Strahan defends claims based on alleged ERISA violations, breach of contract, quantum meruit, breach of fiduciary, insurance code violations, fraud, misrepresentation and other torts. Relatedly, Ms. Strahan also represents third-party payers in overpayment and fraudulent-billing-practices claims against health care providers and related entities. Ms. Strahan has developed the claims data management skills necessary to litigate the hundreds or thousands of medical claims often at issue in managed care cases, and has worked with a variety of experts on medical coding and billing issues.

As part of her managed care and employee-benefits litigation practice, Ms. Strahan is experienced in ERISA welfare benefits litigation, including addressing breach-of-fiduciary duty, standard-of-review, preemption, standing, and discovery issues in those cases. In addition to ERISA, Ms. Strahan is familiar with related regulatory schemes, such as health-plan regulations under the No Suprises Act (NSA), Affordable Care Act (ACA), Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). She also has familiarity with state-law group insurance regulations arising in managed care litigation.

In addition to her trial court practice, Ms. Strahan represents clients in federal and state courts of appeal. In addition to preparing briefing in several appellate courts, she has presented oral argument in the United States Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas. The issues in these appeals have included jurisdictional challenges, successor and contractual liability, and ERISA standard-of-review and benefits-decision defenses.

Representative Cases

• Recovering on third-party payers’ claims for overpayments and improper medical billing practices;
• Defending claims against MCOs arising out of managed care agreements with providers, including disputed issues involving medical coding, billing and reimbursement methodologies;
• Defending claims against MCOs arising out of out-of-network reimbursement under ERISA benefit plans;
• Obtaining summary judgment in favor of defendants in ERISA welfare benefit cases;
• Obtaining dismissal of a putative class-action over ERISA medical benefits; and
• Defending insurance bad faith claims in state court.