Northern Light Health threatened to sue a former employee for defamation after her 15-year-old son published his concerns about patient safety at a Bangor hospital, something that led a free-speech advocacy group to defend the boy.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, is representing Samson Cournane, 15, of Hampden, who published his concerns about Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in an online petition to U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District, and in a letter to the University of Maine’s student newspaper.
FIRE asserts that Northern Light threatened to sue Cournane’s mother, Dr. Anne Yered, a former pediatric intensive care physician at EMMC, for defamation. The health care provider believes that she was the one who actually penned Cournane’s petition, letter and other communications, something the boy and his legal team denies.
“It’s sad to see a hospital try to stop people from talking about important things, especially when my concerns were about patient safety,” Cournane, who is a UMaine junior studying computer science, said. “It felt like they were trying to undermine my credibility because of my age and dismiss what I was saying completely.”
No lawsuits have been filed in the Cournane case. It is still a unique one involving a minor and one of the Bangor region’s largest employers. FIRE is best-known for taking high-profile First Amendment cases on college campuses since its founding in 1999, and it is increasingly challenging the American Civil Liberties Union as a wider defender of free speech.
Cournane began researching Northern Light’s patient safety history after Yered “was required to leave” her position as a pediatric intensive care physician at Eastern Maine Medical Center without cause in July 2021, FIRE claims.
Yered’s dismissal came shortly after she notified Northern Light executives that a colleague completed just one year of a three-year critical care fellowship, Cournane’s petition says. Northern Light denies that Yered was terminated because she raised safety concerns, but a spokesperson declined to comment on the reasons for Yered’s “separation” from the hospital.
FIRE claimed that Yered attempted to reach a settlement over her wrongful termination claims without litigation, but Suzanne Spruce, Northern Light’s spokesperson, said Yered threatened to sue EMMC “relating to her separation from employment.”
Cournane began looking into EMMC’s patient safety ratings and prior incidents reported by media outlets that “showed a troubling pattern of safety issues at his local hospital,” FIRE claims. Spruce said a person contacted EMMC personnel “regarding topics that included issues germane to his mother’s threatened claims,” but he did not disclose his connection to Yered.
When he was unable to meet with Northern Light officials, Cournane started a Change.org petition in September 2022 addressed to Rep. Golden, outlining his findings on Northern Light’s low patient-safety ratings and calling for an investigation. His petition had more than 750 signatures as of Wednesday evening.
The following month, Cournane wrote a letter to the editor in UMaine’s student paper on his concerns about staff shortages and underqualified professionals at the hospital. The letter, published Oct. 28, 2022, contained a link to his petition. Cournane also created a Twitter account to draw attention to his petition and safety concerns.
“When I found out about the risks patients may face and the challenges healthcare workers are facing, I thought I should do something,” Cournane said. “My goal was to improve the health care system.”
Northern Light believes Yered or someone “acting at Dr. Yered’s direction” wrote the “false and malicious statements about one of our longest tenured, highly skilled, dedicated, and competent physicians,” Spruce said.
FIRE maintains Cournane wrote the petition, the letter to the editor and the tweets published through the Twitter account he created, and Cournane signed an affidavit saying as much.
“Not only is the hospital system wrong and had no basis to say that his mom had any involvement in the writings and advocacy that Samson did, but what they’re doing is trying to silence his speech,” Jay Diaz, FIRE senior attorney, said.
In April 2023, the hospital placed Yered on notice that it reserved its right to bring a legal claim against her for the “defamatory statements, which have harmed EMMC and the physician about whom these statements were made,” said Spruce, who emphasized the hospital never threatened to sue Cournane.
That move led FIRE into the case. The organization published its demand for Northern Light to retract the lawsuit threat this week. Diaz said Northern Light’s alleged lawsuit threat is an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation, also called a SLAPP.
In those kinds of lawsuits, large organizations or wealthy people sue critics to burden them with the cost of legal defense regardless of whether the criticism was false or malicious. Maine and 31 other states have laws aimed at discouraging these kinds of lawsuits, which often apply to the press.
“In this case, you have a powerful hospital conglomerate threatening a 15-year-old into silence,” Diaz said. “If they’ll do it to Samson, who could be next?”
While Spruce said Northern Light supports a person’s right to speak freely in a public forum, she said that right is “not without limit.”
“Factually unsupported and demonstrably false assertions that are designed to unfairly undermine the public’s trust and that cause actual harm, like those at issue here, may be challenged through legal means,” Spruce said. “EMMC has an obligation to ensure that statements bearing upon the mission of caring for the region’s most vulnerable population are accurate and truthful.”
