Defamed doc wins $2.5m from Penn

Sometimes they are the words left unsaid that hurt the most. A prime example was the letter Laurence Earley sent to James Peckham six years ago. Earley, a senior associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, sent a letter requesting Peckham's removal as coordinator of a federal program Penn was participating in with the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Last Thursday, a Philadelphia jury decided that the absence of grounds for dismissal in the letter constituted defamation and awarded Peckham $2.5 million for loss of reputation and emotional distress. "The only inference was that there was some horrendous personal failure," Barton Haines, Peckham's lawyer, said of the dismissal letter in an interview with the Legal Intelligencer. "People thought he was a thief or even worse." The eight-person jury agreed with Haines' argument, assessing the award against the University and Early, who wrote the letter. Several defendants were excused during the trial, a result of some charges being dropped or dismissed. Among the original defendants were officials who attended a meeting where the dismissal was discussed and those at the hospital who saw the letter. And CHOP, which was part of the federal program at one time, was also dropped from the suit. The controversy stemmed from Peckham's involvement with the Philadelphia Kiev Project, the brainchild of officials at the United States Agency for International Development and the American International Health Alliance. The AID and AIHA approached Peckham, a veteran of international children's health programs, after he spent the summer of 1992 in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. While the federal organizations agreed to pay for out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the program's staff, Philadelphia-area hospitals were expected to donate their doctors' time. Both HUP and CHOP signed up, and Peckham was appointed as the program's coordinator. Earley's letter, at the heart of the case, was sent only two days before funding for the project was to begin. According to Haines, the letter came two days after a meeting of senior hospital officials, during which they decided to remove Peckham from his position. At the trial, the defendants argued that the removal was a justified result of the hospitals' exclusion from the decision-making process by Peckham. "The feeling was that [the hospitals] were being asked to contribute to the program but they were not given a say in how the program was going to operate," defense lawyer Alan Berkowitz told the Legal Intelligencer. Haines, however, argued that the cause of the dismissal was irrelevant because the letter did not cite the alleged lack of consultation or any other reason. Both sides have expressed some dissatisfaction with the verdict. Haines may appeal a decision by Common Pleas Judge Myrna Field to exclude punitive damages from the jury's consideration. And the defendants also plan their own appeal.