A 40-year-old San Antonio spine practice says the company that spent a year courting it for a buyout instead used confidential financial records to steal its top-earning surgeons and open a competing practice in locations where the clinic operates. South Texas Spinal Clinic filed suit against Surgery Partners Inc., its local hospital affiliate and former staff surgeon Dr. Antonio Webb, accusing them of trade-secret misappropriation, fraud, breach of contract, tortious interference and unfair competition.
The lawsuit, filed last Friday in the Texas Business Court in San Antonio, seeks more than $5 million in damages, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
A Deal That Never Closed
According to the clinic's complaint, South Texas Spinal Clinic and Surgery Partners had maintained a mutually beneficial relationship for years, with the clinic's physicians performing surgeries at South Texas Spine & Surgical Hospital. Surgery Partners approached the clinic in 2024 about a potential acquisition, signaling it hoped to close a deal by the end of 2025, and the two sides signed a nondisclosure agreement on November 5, 2024, covering nonpublic, confidential and proprietary information exchanged during negotiations.
During those talks, the clinic alleges, Surgery Partners focused on identifying its highest-producing physicians and their individual revenue contributions. Then, in December 2025, Surgery Partners terminated all acquisition negotiations without explanation and went silent for about six weeks, the lawsuit claims. The clinic alleges that during that period of silence, Surgery Partners was secretly organizing a competing practice and recruiting clinic doctors.
Competing Practice Registered Months Later
Three months after talks ceased, Surgery Partners filed to register South Texas Surgical & Specialty Group with the Texas Secretary of State's office, according to the lawsuit. The venture later launched as a physician-led practice. The clinic alleges the new group was built using proprietary data shared during the acquisition talks.
Dr. Webb, who joined South Texas Spinal Clinic in 2022 and was voted the clinic's designated representative on the hospital board, set a departure date of May 31 along with colleagues Dianne Lou and Diane McShane, according to the lawsuit. A fourth physician, Joel Edionwe, set his departure date for April 17. Webb is an Air Force combat veteran and Georgetown University School of Medicine graduate with a substantial YouTube and social media following built around mentoring medical students, according to MedPage Today.
Lou, Edionwe and McShane all later joined South Texas Surgical & Specialty Group, the lawsuit states, though none of the three is named as a defendant in the case. The clinic alleges Surgery Partners offered incentives to recruit its most profitable physicians and that Orthopedic & Spine Surgical Hospital of South Texas LP, a named defendant, operates as South Texas Surgical & Specialty Group.
Clinic Says Decades of Value Were Stripped Away
Clinic attorney Brad Thompson said South Texas Spinal Clinic trusted what was presented as a legitimate business opportunity, but that the defendants had a self-interested plan all along that violated the nondisclosure agreement and destroyed decades of investment, per the lawsuit. The clinic alleges it gave the defendants access to its books, records, patient data and other proprietary information under the NDA, only for Surgery Partners to abandon the acquisition and build a competing practice through South Texas Surgical & Specialty Group inside the clinic's own operating locations.
South Texas Spinal Clinic, founded 40 years ago, alleges the defendants' actions cost it physicians, patients, referral relationships and revenue, stripping away value built over four decades. As of Tuesday, the defendants had not filed a response to the lawsuit and did not immediately provide comment when asked, the Express-News reported.
A Large Surgery Company Versus a Local Practice
The size mismatch between the two sides is stark. Surgery Partners carries a market value of about $1.9 billion and operates more than 300 locations across 30 states, generating roughly $99 million in net income on $3.3 billion in revenue last year, per the Express-News. The company surpassed $3 billion in annual revenue for the first time in fiscal year 2024 while expanding to more than 200 surgical locations across 31 states, per a company profile from Umbrex.
The dispute also arrives as Texas has moved to tighten the rules around physician recruitment. Under Senate Bill 1318, effective September 1, 2025, the state now caps physician non-compete durations at one year, limits geographic restrictions to a five-mile radius and caps buyout prices at a physician's annual salary, according to law firm BakerHostetler. The clinic's lawsuit, however, centers on alleged NDA violations and trade-secret misappropriation rather than a non-compete dispute.
A Court Built for Cases Like This
The clinic's $5 million damages demand clears a jurisdictional bar that Texas lawmakers lowered last year. House Bill 40 reduced the minimum amount-in-controversy threshold for filing in the Texas Business Court from $10 million to $5 million, effective September 1, 2025, Hoodline previously reported. The 4th Business Court Division in San Antonio, presided over by Judges Marialyn Barnard and Stacy Rogers Sharp, is to have a hearing room and offices in a building off North St. Mary's Street, according to the San Antonio Report.
This is not the first high-profile recruitment fight to land in that courtroom. In April, the same business court dismissed a major employee poaching lawsuit after rival title companies dropped claims alleging a systematic corporate raid of executive leadership and 70 staff members. South Texas Spinal Clinic has also faced separate legal trouble this year: at least six class-action lawsuits were filed in June over a ransomware attack linked to the “Gentlemen” hacking group that exposed patient Social Security numbers and medical records, seeking more than $1 million in damages.
It remains unclear whether the defendants will try to move the dispute out of the business court or assert counterclaims tied to physician employment contracts, an open question as the case proceeds.
