North Haverhill
The lawsuit filed by Mark Israel in October says that he was fired in an act of illegal retaliation after he objected to the diversion to operating expenses of $6 million raised for cancer research and other services.
The lawsuit alleged that the donated money — including $1.6 million raised through Norris Cotton’s signature fundraising event, The Prouty — was directed away from research to operations by D-H officials.
In a January letter, Thomas Donovan, the director of the Charitable Trusts Unit in the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, concluded that D-H had not violated the law in 2015 when it spent money from donors on salary, equipment and occupancy costs associated with research.
And D-H lawyers argued in a November filing with the Grafton Superior Court that Israel’s claims in his lawsuit violated a provision of a “lucrative transition agreement,” which both Israel and Duane Compton, then-interim dean at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine, signed in January 2016.
The agreement called for Israel to “step down” from his post as the head of Norris Cotton Cancer Center — which he had led for 15 years — this past September, but retain his position as a Geisel professor until June 2019.
D-H argued, and Grafton County Superior Court Judge Lawrence A. MacLeod Jr. agreed, that the agreement prevents Israel from using the courtroom as a venue to resolve the dispute.
In his ruling, dated April 28, MacLeod granted Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s request to move the case to arbitration.
Although D-H was not a direct party in the transition agreement, D-H argued that the arbitration clause applied to disputes with D-H as well as Dartmouth College. In its November filing, D-H pointed to the fact that Israel left the Cancer Center, which is run by D-H, on Sept. 30 as the agreement stipulated.
MacLeod agreed, writing “the court finds the defendants have standing to enforce the Transition Agreement as third-party beneficiaries, and that the plaintiff’s claims fall within the scope of the agreement’s arbitration clause.”
Don Schroeder, a Boston-based employment lawyer who is representing D-H, reacted to the ruling positively.
“D-H is gratified by both the favorable decision of the Attorney General’s Charitable Trust Unit and now the dismissal of this lawsuit by a court of law, and we hope the public focus can shift to what matters most — our patients and the high-quality care they receive at the cancer center,” he said in an email on Thursday.
Israel’s attorney Geoffrey Vitt said in a phone interview on Thursday that D-H’s use of The Prouty funds for building and operating costs is in conflict with the public’s perception of how those funds ought to be used, the findings of the state Attorney General’s Office notwithstanding.
Given the public importance of The Prouty, Vitt, who is based in Norwich, said D-H ought to provide the public with an accounting of how Prouty money was used.
“It cannot be disputed that there is significant public misunderstanding and confusion of how the Prouty money was used,” he said.
Vitt said that he plans to amend Israel’s original lawsuit to add facts to support the assertion that the transition agreement should only apply to Israel’s employment with Dartmouth College, and not with D-H.
“We will be amending the complaint with additional facts to establish that Dartmouth-Hitchcock cannot benefit from an arbitration agreement that was strictly between Dr. Israel and Dartmouth College,” Vitt said.
Vitt added that the judge’s decision is not a dismissal based on the merits of the case.
Israel, in an email on Thursday, declined to comment on the judge’s ruling, but instead said his focus is on D-H’s use of The Prouty funds.
“This ruling deals with a nuanced issue of the law, and my concern is justice for those who have donated to the Cancer Center that I led and raised funds to support for 15 years,” Israel said.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
