Rob Landy, the attorney representing Dr. William Husel in a $20 million malicious prosecution lawsuit, said Husel is trying to get his name and his life back.
Last week, Landy filed the federal lawsuit in Michigan against Trinity Health, where the owner of Mount Carmel Health systems is headquartered.
A Franklin County jury acquitted Husel last year on 14 counts of murder for patient deaths prosecutors tried to tie to painkiller doses he prescribed.
Landy said Trinity Health convinced Franklin County prosecutors to charge Husel.
"I don't think they could have pursued this case unless Trinity gave them the leap from Dr. Husel using levels of painkillers not common among his practice to this was done to harm people, this was done to hasten deaths,” said Landy. “That came from Trinity and nobody else."
Trinity Health declined comment, other than calling the allegations unfounded and saying the company will address them in the legal process. The Franklin County Prosecutors' Office also declined comment.
"Every single time Mount Carmel or Trinity looked into whether there was any evidence that William attempted or intended to do anything that was harmful, there just wasn't,” said Landy. “No one ever supported that theory."
Landy said administrations need to trust their practitioners and understand the distinct differences when it comes to the treatment of pain.
"The way you treat a person who's recovering from knee surgery is very, very different from the way you treat a cancer patient which is very, very different from the way you treat somebody who's palliative and maybe has a week to live and then here we have patients who had minutes to live,” said Landy.
Husel remains in central Ohio with his wife and three children.
“He's still in an enormous amount of shock and he's still processing the pain that he went through for years,” said Landy. “There were a couple of Christmases where he thought that that was the last Christmas that he was going to be able to be with his children. It is an enormous thing to process, and he's not done.”
Husel also has an unsettled defamation lawsuit against Trinity Health, as do nine of his former colleagues.
