Judge Rules for D-H In Discrimination Suit
Lebanon — A federal judge has ended a lawsuit by a former Dartmouth-Hitchcock resident who suffered from insomnia and alleged that D-H, which fired her in 2010, discriminated against her because of her disability and because she is African-American.
Judge Steven McAuliffe of the U.S. District Court in Concord granted D-H’s motion for summary judgment in the case of Christyna Faulkner, who graduated from medical school in 2007 and in July 2008 began graduate medical training in diagnostic radiology at D-H’s Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock spokesman Rick Adams said the hospital was “gratified by the court’s decision to grant judgment in our favor without the need for a trial” but had no further comment.
McAuliffe’s Aug. 12 ruling noted that Faulkner had been unable to replace her lawyer after he withdrew from the case and that Faulkner had missed several deadlines to file written objections to D-H’s motion.
Faulkner did not respond to telephone messages seeking comment.
Faulkner’s was one of three federal lawsuits filed since 2010 in which a former D-H resident claimed that she had illegally been dismissed from one of the programs in which the local hospital trains hundreds of newly licensed doctors in various medical specialties. D-H prevailed in all three cases.
However, a former resident’s complaint did prompt the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education to issue a warning that D-H and its surgical residency program had one or more “areas of non-compliance” that could jeopardize their respective accreditations. Those warnings remain in effect.
