“Premature to dismiss anybody,” says Larry Brandt

A 10th Circuit judge will take the time to weigh whether to dismiss two Oconee hospital employees from a lawsuit that alleges a dentist and his assistant were improperly fired.  Dr. Robert Strum and his assistant, Betty Morgan, lost their jobs last year, and the two are blaming, among others, OMH’s Jeanne Ward and Heather Goss.  A one-hour pre-trial hearing was held in front of Judge Scott Sprouse this afternoon at the Oconee Courthouse.  Strum and Morgan worked for a free dental clinic that had been established at the hospital.  But Judge Sprouse was told they got into a dispute over whether it was proper for them to refuse to extract 14 broken teeth from the mouth of one of the clinic’s patients.  Their attorney, Larry Brandt, says they balked because the patient was suffering from an infection and they feared for themselves and others.  But the defense attorney, Thomas Bright, says the two lost their jobs because they disobeyed an order to treat which was the prerogative of the hospital and Goss, as the director of the Mountain Lakes Access Health Clinic.  OMH’s Ward, as the hospital CEO, is also being sued individually.  Defense attorney Bright identified Greenville Health System as a third defendant in the case.  The defense, in part, is relying on South Carolina’s position as an employment at will state, while the plaintiffs argue that state policy must give its medical professionals the authority of who is to be treated, when they are to be treated, and how they are treated.