LEBANON — In a ruling last week, a U.S. District Court denied Dartmouth Health’s motions for a new trial regarding the decision earlier this year to award a former fertility doctor at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center $1.125 million in damages after finding her 2017 firing violated Vermont’s disability discrimination law.
The judge also awarded Dr. Misty Blanchette Porter an additional $225,000 in prejudgment interest on the economic damages such as lost income and expenses the court previously award to her. The judge also granted her legal team a total of $1.2 million in attorneys fees and costs.
The $1.2 million is a slight decrease from the legal team’s fee request of $1.7 million, and they are still deciding whether to cross appeal the decision, Norwich attorney Geoffrey Vitt, who has led Blanchette Porter’s legal team since the beginning of the suit eight years ago, said in a Tuesday phone interview.
“Overall, we’re delighted with the judge’s decision,” he said.
Following the ruling on its appeals, Dartmouth Health is “assessing our options,” Audra Burns, a spokeswoman for the health system, said in a Tuesday statement.
Court records preceding the ruling show that the health system planned to bring the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York if its motions were denied.
“We are confident that the trial judge made the correct decisions on all of the motions” and that the New York court will “affirm” them, Vitt said.
November’s ruling came seven months after Dartmouth Health, the parent organization of DHMC, appealed the jury’s decision made last April to award Blanchette Porter the $1.125 million in damages.
The damages comprise $1 million in economic damages and $125,000 in non-economic damages such as mental anguish and suffering.
The jury, which sided with DH on Blanchette Porter’s five other claims, found that Dartmouth Health’s decision to fire her violated Vermont’s disability discrimination law.
The five other claims included disability discrimination under New Hampshire law, violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, wrongful discharge, retaliation, and violation of New Hampshire Whistleblowers’ Protection Act.
Blanchette Porter was among three fertility doctors whose contracts were terminated when DHMC closed its division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility, or REI, in May 2017.
In her lawsuit, Blanchette Porter alleged that her disability, a cerebral spinal fluid leak resulting in multiple surgeries and two lengthy leaves of absence, contributed to DHMC’s decision not to keep her on staff after the REI division shut down.
She now works as a fertility specialist with the Reproductive Health and Infertility Center at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.
As a Norwich resident, Blanchette Porter was able to file her lawsuit in Vermont.
DH appealed the court’s decision to award damages on the grounds that U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin J. Doyle gave the jury erroneous instructions regarding the causation methods to use when evaluating the case.
DH also alleged that the court’s instructions to the jury included an incorrect statement of law regarding the “motivator factor” test, which is used to prove discrimination claims.
In the motion, DH asked the court to make an alternative decision or hold a new trial.
DH filed a second motion requesting a new trial on the grounds that, among other reasons, Blanchette Porter’s damages expert was unreliable and failed to provide relevant information to the jury, and that the court should have instructed the jury to consider the plaintiff’s earnings from her new job at University of Vermont Medical Center in the discussion of economic damages.
The court denied the motions in the November ruling, stating that: “A district court ordinarily should not grant a new trial unless it is convinced that the jury has a seriously erroneous result or that the verdict is a miscarriage of justice.”