After a partnership, a breakup, a lawsuit, a counter lawsuit and two years of waiting for a result from those lawsuits, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that Hutcheson Medical Center owes Erlanger Health System $36.4 million.
But while the ruling seems to shut the door on a chaotic rivalry between the two local hospitals, in fact, it is really just another step. Now, holding a favorable court order in its hands, Erlanger will go about trying to actually collect the money.
But it may discover it is dipping its bucket in a dry well.
Hutcheson filed for Chapter 11 protection under the federal Bankruptcy Code in November 2014. At the time, court filings show, Hutcheson held $30 million in assets. Since then, the hospital’s lawyers have sold its main campus to a company in Atlanta and its nursing home to a company in New York. Regions Bank, meanwhile, has the legal right to seize Hutcheson’s ambulatory surgery and cancer center on Battlefield Parkway.
What’s left are scraps – and a promise from Catoosa and Walker county officials that each county would contribute about $8.5 million.