In a stunning development, a North Carolina mother, Cynthia Avens, has launched a powerful offensive strike against ECU Health Medical Center, formerly known as Vidant Medical Center, and its high-profile legal team from K&L Gates. Avens, who has been fighting for justice in the death of her daughter, Keisha Marie White, has filed a series of motions that expose the defendant’s legal strategy, as not only flawed but potentially unethical. The case that was filed on March 22, 2024, in U.S. District Court, centers around allegations of civil rights violations, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, has taken a dramatic turn, leaving ECU Health and their legal counsel scrambling to defend their actions.
Background
White tragically died in 2014 due to the inhumane treatment she received at ECU Health in Greenville, NC. Since then, Avens has consistently fought to hold those responsible for her daughter’s death criminally accountable. However, Avens claims in her lawsuit that ECU Health, the Pitt County District Attorney, Faris Dixon, and others have orchestrated a systematic cover-up, preventing a proper investigation into White’s death. She claims this has resulted in violations of her civil rights.
Avens, despite being a pro se litigant (one who represents oneself in court), has meticulously built her case, challenging the powerful entities she believes are responsible for denying her justice.
In this case, ECU Health is being sued under their legal name, Pitt County Memorial Hospital, and are represented by K&L Gates. The Gates firm was founded by William “Bill” H. Gates, II, the father of Microsoft mogul, Bill Gates III. The two other defendants named in the lawsuit are Dixon and the county medical examiner, Dr. Karen Kelly, both represented by separate legal counsel from NC’s Department of Justice.
With strength in numbers, education, experience, and resources against her, Avens has managed to gain momentum as she has countered multiple attempts by the defendants to dismiss her claims. The stakes were raised higher when Avens exposed a series of questionable tactics employed by the Gates law firm.
The alleged tactics by the Gates firm include misrepresentations to the court and an attempt to coerce Avens into striking critical evidence from the record. These tactics have cast a shadow over the hospital’s defense.
Bombshell Motions
On August 22, 2024, Avens filed two motions with the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, NC, sending shockwaves through the legal community. The first motion seeks to strike an alleged late-filed response from Gates, which she argued was, both, procedurally improper and based on false claims that she introduced new allegations in her response to their motion to dismiss. Through her motion, Avens methodically dismantled Counsel’s arguments, demonstrating that the allegations were, in fact, addressed in her amended complaint and were not new.
The second motion challenges the applicability of a 2016 agreement between Avens and ECU Health. Though Avens contends that the agreement was coerced and entered into fraudulently, Gates argued that it still bars her current claim. Avens submitted a copy of the agreement and other documents to the court as exhibits to support her arguments of fraud, coercion, and inapplicability to the current civil rights claims.
According to the motion filed in court last Thursday, Gates attempted to coerce Avens into striking the agreement from the docket via an emailed letter threatening damages due to the agreement’s confidentiality breach. Avens maintains that since Gates used the agreement against her, misrepresented the scope of the agreement, and introduced the consideration of the agreement in his motion to dismiss, the legal team waived the agreement’s confidentiality and opened the door for her to enter it as evidence.
Implications
If Avens had succumbed to Gates’s intimidation tactic, submitting a motion to strike the agreement from the docket, doing so could have prevented the court from using evidence confirming that Gates intentionally tried to mislead the court by claiming Avens’s civil rights case should be dismissed based on the agreement’s terms.
The fallout from these motions could rain down on the defendants like a bad storm. Such illicit acts places the magnifying glass on their motions to dismiss, as well as on future arguments they raise before the court.
What’s Next…
The possibilities seem overwhelmingly in Avens’s favor. Could there be a summary judgement in Avens’s favor? Will ECU Health and other defendants seek a settlement before more potential missteps occur? If they settle, will Dixon agree to Avens’s request for a special prosecutor to oversee a complete investigation into her daughter’s death? Or will the defendants risk going to trial where more damaging evidence will potentially be brought to light?
Cynthia Avens, with no formal legal training, has proven herself to be a formidable opponent against those with money and power. Her latest moves have not only shaken the defense, but has exposed the lengths that they are willing to go to avoid accountability.
It is certain that Avens is not backing down. She is not only willing, but apparently able, to stand toe-to-toe against her opponents. And the fight for justice for Keisha White is not over.
North Carolina news outlets continue to be silent on this story.
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