Sunny Hostin’s husband, Emmanuel “Manny” Hostin, has been named in an insurance fraud lawsuit filed in New York City.
Based on legal papers revealed by the Daily Mail and examined by Us Weekly on Tuesday, January 7, Emmanuel, who tied the knot with The View cohost back in 1998, is among nearly 200 defendants mentioned in the legal action presented to the New York Eastern District Court on December 17, 2024.
Identified as “Emmanuel Hostin, M.D.,” the orthopedic surgeon, working at New York’s Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West Hospitals, as per U.S. Health, is charged with federal insurance fraud and accused of “receiving kickbacks for conducting surgery and … invoicing a firm that provided insurance for taxi firms and Uber and Lyft drivers,” as outlined by the Daily Mail.
Us has reached out to representatives for Sunny and Emmanuel for comment.
The lawsuit states, “Hostin was aware that he was offering deceitful medical and other healthcare services, which included arthroscopic surgeries.” The filings additionally claim that the insurance provider American Transit was subsequently invoiced “in return for kickbacks and/or other forms of compensation that were camouflaged as dividends or other monetary distributions.”
Emmanuel addressed the allegations via his attorney Daniel John Thwaites, telling the outlet that his client “denies each and every allegation.” Thwaites added that the lawsuit is a “blanket, scattershot, meritless lawsuit by a near-bankrupt insurance carrier.”
Thwaites offered further, “It is meant to intimidate and harass doctors from collecting for care given to American Transit insureds and their passengers. American Transit has rushed into the lawsuit without ever conducting an examination of Dr. Hostin or expressing any concerns to his lawyers. The real story here is about an insurance carrier abusing the legal system to limit and restrict health care benefits to its insureds and their passengers, and write off its proper obligations.”
Emmanuel and Sunny, 56, reside in Purchase, New York, and share two children — a son, Gabe, who was born in 2002, and a daughter, Paloma, who was born in 2006.
Sunny, an attorney and multi-platform journalist who joined The View as a full-time cohost in 2016, has been candid about the various troubles her family has seen over the years. In January 2021, she revealed that Emmanuel’s parents both died from COVID-19 just weeks prior.
“Although I’ve chosen a very public career, as most of you know, those of you that know my husband, Manny, know that he is intensely private. But after speaking with him, he felt that from a public health standpoint it was very important for me to share that we are deeply saddened that Manny lost both of his parents over the holidays,” Sunny said on The View at the time.
Sunny added that her in-laws, Dr. Maria Jesus and Dr. A. Emmanuel, “were both physicians and they were both very careful” and “didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving with us because we all decided that it wasn’t safe. And after a lot of contact tracing, we still don’t know how they contracted this virus and this disease.”
According to the filing, American Transit is seeking at least $450 million in damages. An attorney for the company, William Natbony, told the Daily Mail, “‘No fault fraud is a huge problem in New York. American Transit filed a lawsuit as part of its statutory responsibility to fight such fraud.”
