Attorneys for Erlanger Health System said Hutcheson Medical Center lawyers have "resorted to desperate tactics" in "desiring to escape from a $20 million debt without paying a cent."
Erlanger said in the process Hutcheson had "publicly sullied the reputation of a well-respected attorney at Miller & Martin."
Erlanger is asking that Federal Judge Harold Murphy not to allow Hutcheson to amend its counter-claim filed after Erlanger demanded payment for helping to prop up the financially-ailing Fort Oglethorpe Hospital. Hutcheson claims that Erlanger failed to deliver on promises during its management period.
Hutcheson had claimed it recently learned that attorney Ward Nelson, while representing Hutcheson, had shared confidential emails with Erlanger officials.
Erlanger said Hutcheson has had the emails in question for some six months and said they are "mostly non-remarkable" and did not give Erlanger any advantage.
The Erlanger motion says Hutcheson's "penchant for hyperbole and unfounded accusations against Erlanger is nothing new. Its willingness to plead, and peddle to the media, various fictions to tarnish a business partner that saved it from immediate financial collapse in 2011 has become its standard operating procedure."
It says Hutcheson attorneys "have been doing increasingly desperate things" and it had "taken those acts of desperation from the frustrating to the truly offensive."
The motion says, "Respectfully, Erlanger asks the Court not to allow this lawsuit to metastasize beyond its already unwieldy mass. HMC's proposed claims are dilatory, factually implausible, improperly pled, and legally deficient."