I made a trip to Frankfort Circuit Court this morning in part to obtain additional documents related to this legal dispute, but chiefly to attend the hearing in Judge Wingate’s court that rekindles the court proceedings that were stayed last February in order to give the two parties a chance for mediation. As I recently reported, court-ordered mediation failed to produce a mutually agreeable result. Several sources confirm my understanding that after two mediation sessions, the parties were offered a chance to continue and that the University of Louisville unilaterally declined to do so. UofL has not responded to my private email or public request for confirmation or comment. I had a naive hope that the report of the mediator to the court would illuminate matters, but alas, the brief report tells us nothing more than that mediation failed. Nonetheless, we have additional publicly available court filings that give us a pretty good idea of the issues in dispute.
First-round action.
This morning, as anticipated, Norton’s attorneys entered their motion to lift the stay (which was accepted), their motion to dismiss UofL’s counterclaims (also apparently accepted), and to submit their First Amended Complaint to the court. UofL objected to this latter motion on the grounds that the amended complaint contained a motion to enforce an oral settlement that Norton– but not UofL– claims to have been reached. Norton claims the the University blew up that agreement the next day by reintroducing poison pills that it knew would be deal-breakers. UofL claims the parties were still negotiating. The argument in court today was that if in fact an enforceable agreement had been reached, all the other collateral issues would fade away and the litigation that might otherwise take 5 or 6 years would be simplified. The Judge tended to agree with this argument.
When all was said and done, the gist of it is that Judge Wingate allowed Norton to file its amended complaint as is but required that the parties focus their discovery and litigation over the next 60 days on whether or not Norton and the University did in fact reach the oral agreement identified in the complaint that Norton wants the court to enforce. Norton would have at that time the option to file a separate motion to enforce. Continue reading “University of Louisville vs. Norton Healthcare Spins Up Again in the Courts”