Earlier this month, Peter Carter, a highly trained surgeon at Portsmouth Regional Hospital filed a lawsuit against entities affiliated with the hospital alleging he was “forced out of his job due to age discrimination, then was defamed by a letter to providers saying he retired.” According to the suit, he built an impressive 34-year surgical career at different medical centers in Maine, York, and Portsmouth.
Earlier this month, Peter Carter, a highly trained surgeon at Portsmouth Regional Hospital filed a lawsuit against entities affiliated with the hospital alleging he was “forced out of his job due to age discrimination, then was defamed by a letter to providers saying he retired.” According to the suit, he built an impressive 34-year surgical career at different medical centers in Maine, York, and Portsmouth.
The suit itself was filed in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire and names a variety of different defendants, including “Appledore Medical Group, Hospital Corporation of America, HCA Health Services of New Hampshire, Portsmouth Regional Hospital (PRH), and two PRH executives.” Carter is represented by Kenneth Murphy, a Portsmouth attorney, and the specific allegations detailed in the suit include “breach of contract, interference with contractual relations, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, two counts of age discrimination, defamation, invasion of privacy and loss of consortium.” As a result, he is seeking enhanced compensatory damages, though the exact dollar amount is unknown.
Representing the defendants is Preti Flaherty attorney, Peter Callaghan. While his office reported he is unavailable for comment at the moment, Callaghan “previously petitioned to have the case moved from the Rockingham County Superior Court to the federal court, where it remains.”
Callaghan is joined by co-counsel, Michael Messerschmidt, who said the “hospital defendants will vigorously defend against the allegation, which they deny, and will be filing an answer to the suit next week.” But what happened, exactly? What was the series of events that prompted Carter to file the lawsuit in the first place?
To get a better idea of why Carter made the allegations he did, let’s take a look at his career history. According to the suit, he began his surgical career at “York Hospital in the 1990s when he was the first to perform several surgical procedures, while also teaching medical students at the University of New England.” From there, he allegedly “worked as an Appledore surgeon from November 2010 until March 3, 2017, and allegedly had an unparalleled reputation and excellent work performance evaluations.” In his suit Carter claims “he eventually became very proficient in handling breast cancer cases and in January 2017, noticed a decline in referrals.”
It was around that time that he was notified by a hospital executive that there was “a preference in making referrals to female surgeons over male surgeons.” In a discussion about referrals, the hospital executive told home the patient preference for female surgeons was “generational” and noted that “younger doctors were able to get more referrals.” What Carter heard, however, was that he was being discriminated against because of his age.
Not long after the discussion, Carter alleges in the suit that he was informed “his position was being eliminated due to a lack of referral base.” He was given a choice, however. Either he “could say he was retiring at the end of 2017, or accept 90 days notice for his job to end.” The suit further stated:
“To the extent (Carter’s) referral base was reduced it was directly caused by the decision by defendant PRH to refer such cases to younger or female doctors.”
Around the same time, Carter allegedly began to “suffer physically and was briefly hospitalized.” During his hospital stay, his suit claims “Appledore later sent a letter to providers, purporting to be from him, though he never wrote or consented to it.” When discussing the purpose of the letter, the lawsuit states, “The purpose of the letter was to tell all providers that (Carter) had retired…however, Plaintiff had not and did not retire.”
Since being forced out of his job, Carter has allegedly gone from making $350,000 per year to $50,000 per year.
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