Tuesday, January 06, 2004

By Pamela Gaynor and Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

U.S. District Judge Robert Cindrich said yesterday that he would resign from the federal bench to become chief legal counsel to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center starting Feb. 1.

Cindrich, who has served as a UPMC director since 1996 and represented it as outside counsel before his 1994 judicial appointment, will replace George Huber, who was named UPMC's senior vice president for corporate relations and regional programming last fall after serving 28 years as general counsel to UPMC or its predecessor institutions.

UPMC Chairman G. Nicholas Beckwith said in a brief interview that the health care giant's decision to hire Cindrich was unrelated to last month's filing of two lawsuits against Magee-Womens Hospital, which UPMC owns.

Among other things, the suits charge that the hospital falsified hundreds of thousands of PAP smear reports, which are used to screen women for cervical cancer.

Beckwith credited Cindrich, who has chaired UPMC's audit committee, with exemplary leadership and with initiating board discussions about corporate responsibility and adherence to nationally promulgated guidelines.

For his part, Cindrich, who is one of only two U.S. District Court judges here to step down while on active status, said in a letter of resignation that he would miss his colleagues on the bench and other employees at the courthouse Downtown.

Widely respected in the legal community, the 60-year-old father of three also said he looked forward to serving the region's "largest and strongest economic engine" and one that conducts top-flight research in many medical specialties.

As chief counsel, Cindrich will coordinate legal strategy for the region's largest hospital and physician network, but much of its legal work, including defense in the Magee lawsuits, will continue to be done by outside lawyers.

Cindrich also said the Magee lawsuits, which is one of many legal challenges a large institution such as UPMC faces, had no bearing on his decision. He said he had decided to leave the court long before those suits were filed, in part for financial reasons.

Cindrich earned $155,000 a year as a federal court judge and would have continued to receive that much until his death had he retired from the bench. But his wife, Bonnie, would have received no survivor's benefit.

"If death takes me early, she is stuck," he said. "She gets zero. In the private sector, by federal law, every pension must contain a survivor's benefit."

Cindrich declined to say how much his compensation at UPMC will be, as did Beckwith, UPMC's chairman.

His decision to leave the court also stemmed, in part, from developments in the judiciary that he decried, particularly the strict sentencing guidelines that he and many federal judges say remove discretion from jurists.

Cindrich said the guidelines, adopted in 1989 and amended several times since, discourage defendants from going to trial -- one reason roughly 95 percent of them plead guilty.

The guidelines have effectively done away with an individual's right to trial under the 6th Amendment, Cindrich said. As evidence, he pointed to the fact that he presided over no criminal trials last year and only one in 2002.

The judge also has been critical of other trends, such as U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's practice of tracking departures from the sentencing guidelines judges grant in favor of greater leniency.

Many judges in the federal system have said that Ashcroft and the Bush administration were trying to intimidate the judiciary, which is supposed to be an independent branch of government. Cindrich called Ashcroft's so-called "report cards" an inappropriate policy for an attorney general.

Pamela Gaynor can be reached a pgaynor@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1613. Torsten Ove can be reached at tove@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2620.

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