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Chief executive officers (CEO) and medical staffs may butt heads at times, but such disagreements rarely land the medical staff, CEO, and the hospital in court. This, however, was exactly the case when physicians at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, CA, went to court in 2003 to challenge their loss of self-governance. The verdict: The medical staff won a settlement from the hospital, and California adopted a new self-governance law that took effect in January.