A Vermont doctor sued a hospital for defaming him.  The court agreed he’d been defamed but threw the case out anyway.  Why?  Because the physician had “invited” the defamation.  The hospital merely accepted the invitation.

And that’s not all.  The underlying conflict had been settled years before, with the physician receiving a hefty payment from the hospital.  So the court ruled that the new case was also barred by res judicata.

But back to the defamation invitation.  The case goes back to peer review activities of 2003 and 2004.  The doctor resigned while under fire.  So, as required by law, the hospital submitted an Adverse Action Report (AAR) to the National Practitioner Data Bank.  Then, in 2011 the doctor asked the hospital to “remove” the AAR.  The hospital declined.  So he asked the Secretary of HHS to delete it.  The Secretary wrote the hospital asking it to “share . . . the sequence of events” that led to the doctor’s resignation.  The hospital did, and the Secretary rejected the doctor’s request to remove the AAR.

That’s when the doctor sued the hospital for defamation.  What was the defamation?  According to the doctor, it was the hospital’s retelling of the events of 2003 and 2004 that led to his resignation.

The court was not impressed.  Pulling out the Restatement of Torts, the court invoked the doctrine of “invited harm” and “invited defamation” and ruled that the hospital had simply complied with a request initiated by the doctor.

The lesson?  Be careful what you ask for.

The case is Long v. Quorum Health et al., Case No. 2:13-cv-00189-wks (D.Vt. May 6, 2014).