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AUSTIN, Texas — November 24, 2025 — National trial firm Reid Collins & Tsai LLP announced today that it has filed a $3.4 billion lawsuit on behalf of Mark Kronfeld, Trustee of the SHC Creditor Litigation Trust, against Ralph de la Torre and other Steward insiders for orchestrating what the complaint calls a “years-long extraction of value” that led to the collapse of Steward Health Care. The SHC Creditor Litigation Trust was established in the Steward bankruptcy to investigate and prosecute claims on behalf of Steward’s creditors, including former employees, patients, and vendors.

According to the complaint, the scheme began in 2010 when then CEO Mr. de la Torre convinced Cerberus Capital Management to purchase a struggling hospital network from the Archdiocese of Boston, rebrand it as Steward, and convert it to a for-profit enterprise. As a condition for approving the sale, Massachusetts entered into a series of “Assessment & Monitoring Agreements” with Steward that, among other things, barred Steward from issuing dividends. By the end of 2015, however, the five-year monitorship ended, paving the way for the alleged misconduct.

Working with Cerberus, Steward executives, insiders, and others, the complaint alleges that Mr. de la Torre engineered a decade of self-interested and harmful transactions, most notably multiple sale-leaseback deals that stripped Steward of its hospitals, burdened it with onerous lease obligations, and funneled the sale proceeds to equity holders in the form of massive dividends.

By 2024, Steward had essentially been gutted, with its most valuable assets sold, its operating capital drained, and its facilities deteriorating. Many political and media commentators have described Steward as epitomizing the destructive impact of private equity and corporate greed on the American healthcare system. Indeed, Mr. de la Torre’s conduct at Steward has been the subject of numerous Congressional investigations.

“This wasn’t only mismanagement; it was also a systematic extraction of value from a vital healthcare system serving a low-income population,” said William T. Reid IV, founding partner of Reid Collins. “The damage is staggering, and this lawsuit seeks accountability on a scale that matches the harm.”

The case is brought by national bankruptcy trustee Mark Kronfeld, an attorney, former prosecutor, and seasoned fiduciary who has worked closely with Reid Collins to investigate the transactions on behalf of the SHC Creditor Litigation Trust.

“Mark has been in the trenches with us,” Mr. Reid continued. “He understands exactly how Mr. de la Torre’s misconduct hollowed out this company, and he is committed to recovering every dollar for the Trust’s beneficiaries.”

The Trustee is asserting more than $3.4 billion in claims to redress the harm caused by the misconduct.

The Reid Collins team included William T. Reid IV, Eric D. Madden, Jeremy Wells, J. Benjamin King, Jeffrey E. Gross, Julia Gokhberg and Taylor Lewis.

The case is Mark Kronfeld, as Trustee of the SHC Creditor Litigation Trust v. Ralph de la Torre, et al. (In re Steward Health Care System LLC, et al.), Adv. Proceeding No. 25-03593 (CML) (Bankr. S.D. Tex.).

In a sweeping trial win, national trial firm Reid Collins & Tsai LLP (“Reid Collins”) secured a unanimous jury verdict in favor of JW Aluminum Company (“JWA”) in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. The jury awarded JWA over $112 million—before accounting for five years of pre-judgment interest—after finding that a group of insurers breached their obligations under an “all-risk” policy following a catastrophic incident at JWA’s Goose Creek manufacturing facility.

After a five-day jury trial and testimony from more than a dozen witnesses, the jury found that the insurers had wrongfully denied coverage for both the physical damage to JWA’s equipment and the resulting business interruption. The jury awarded the maximum possible recovery: approximately $32.3 million for repair and replacement costs and the full $80 million policy sub-limit for business-interruption losses.

“I could not be happier for our client — or prouder of my team,” said William T. Reid, IV, co-founder of Reid Collins. “This was a total team victory. Everyone contributed, and every contribution mattered. Our associates didn’t just sit at the table — they stood up, examined witnesses, argued motions, and helped navigate the charge conference. “The ethos of our firm demands that young lawyers get in the game from day one. This trial proved, once again, why that approach works.”

Background

JWA is one of the largest producers of flat-rolled aluminum in the United States. In 2020, a small splash of molten aluminum from a production line at JWA’s Goose Creek, South Carolina plant kicked off a chain of events that nearly destroyed the facility.  Although no workers or first responders were injured, the incident caused tens of millions of dollars of property damage and hundreds of millions in lost profits.

JWA’s insurers argued that they were only required to pay for a small fraction of these losses under a policy endorsement that reduced coverage for “direct physical loss or harm caused by heat from Molten Material” from the policy limit of $250 million to just $10 million. The District Court for the District of South Carolina granted the insurers’ motion for summary judgment on the issue, finding that the endorsement unambiguously applied. However, in March of this year, Reid Collins won a unanimous reversal by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that paved the way for JWA’s subsequent claim for over $100 million.

The Reid Collins team included William T. Reid, IV, Craig Boneau, Scott Saldaña, Dylan Jones, Julia Byrne, John Hammel Strauss, and Sam Hilliard.

The case is JW Aluminum Company, v. ACE American Insurance Company, Westport Insurance Corporation, AIG Specialty Insurance Company, & General Security Indemnity Company of Arizona, Case No. 2:21-CV-01034-BHH.