Hutcheson Medical Center at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga.Officials for Hutcheson Medical Center say prominent Chattanooga law firm Miller & Martin committed fraud.
In a federal court filing this afternoon, attorneys for the North Georgia hospital said that attorney Ward Nelson shared Hutcheson’s confidential information with Erlanger Health System four years ago. Nelson was representing Hutcheson at the time, and the two hospitals were negotiating a management agreement for Erlanger to take over Hutcheson’s operations.
According to the court document, Nelson blind carbon copied Erlanger officials on emails to Hutcheson. In those emails, Nelson supposedly wrote about Erlanger as if its leaders were not reading the conversation, misleading Hutcheson’s officials. Some of Nelson’s messages said “confidential” at the top of them, according to the filing.
Hutcheson officials say they learned about this through the discovery process in a current lawsuit with Erlanger.
“The new evidence that has come to light is nothing short of remarkable,” wrote the hospital’s new attorney, Rachel Fields.