Appeals court documents available.
[Addendum: Case has been further appealed to KY Supreme Court.]
I recently was able to obtain some of the court documents related to University Medical Center, Inc’s appeal of a lower court’s finding that it is a public institution and not the private corporation it claims to be. You can read some of the background on this case in an earlier article to which I have also added the links below.
•Court Documents for 2013-CA-000446:
• UMC Brief of 7-15-2013. (pdf 1.4 MB)
• Amicus Brief from ACLU of 10-11-2013. (pdf 1.0 MB)
• Amicus Brief from Courier Journal et. al. -undated. (pdf 1.4 MB)
• UMC Reply to Amicus Brief of ACLU. 10-25-2013 (pdf 0.6 MB)
I will comment further below or later when I have a chance to read the briefs carefully. In my experience, it is through documents like these that insight useful to the public about the workings in UofL’s secret gardens can be gained. To the same end, I will write soon about some UofL documents I obtained through the open records request process.
UMC is represented in this case by Stites & Harbison, the same firm that is representing UofL in its legal dispute with Norton Healthcare. Stites is a great law firm– indeed I was a client once. But in my way of thinking the fact that it represents both corporations is just another example demonstrating that the the University of Lousiville and University Medical Center, Inc. are part of the same organization.
Can any reader inform the rest of us whether or not UofL (a.k.a. UMC) has or will further appeal the case against it to the Kentucky Supreme Court? Does anyone doubt that it will be the President of UofL that makes that decision?
[Addendum, Dec 1: A well informed reader tells me that UMC has indeed appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court to hear its case. P.H.]
Peter Hasselbacher, MD
President, KHPI
30 Nov 2014
Of course, if the University can prevail that its hospital operation is indeed private, than it will be free to sell the building to Catholic Health Initiatives. That transfer of ownership was the initial intention back in 2012 when Governor Beshear and Attorney General Conway blocked the deal. I am told by one of the principals that UofL lost $100 million when it had to settle for a management arrangement with KentuckyOne Health. In my opinion, there is little doubt that an outright sale is still the ultimate goal and that is why UofL is so willing to thumb its nose at both Frankfort and the public. It’s is not all about academic goals, but attendant personal wealth that some in the University community hope to accrue from its commercial research and real-estate enterprises.