Another high-ranking medical professional is suing the Nevada Cancer Institute, charging it broke a promise to pay her six months' severance pay after she lost her job in the mass layoffs in April.
Dr. Karen Fields filed suit Tuesday in Clark County District Court. This is at least the fifth lawsuit over the layoffs in April and the firing of a doctor a few months earlier – the other four are pending in state and federal courts.
The Cancer Institute in April said it was eliminating about 150 jobs on an emergency basis so it could survive financially.
Fields says in her lawsuit that in 2009, she was recruited to NCI from a prominent position as professor and vice president of global academic programs at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Fields says she was recruited by NCI to be chief medical officer and associate center director for clinical affairs and was attracted to the position because of representations NCI wanted to become a nationally recognized cancer center designated by the National Cancer Institute.
"Fields took on tremendous risk to career, family and her financial well being to take the position offered by NCI," the lawsuit says, adding she negotiated a contract requiring either six months' notice to end the contract or six months' severance pay.
The suit says she agreed to a noncompete clause and the six months' provision "with the knowledge that this would be the minimum amount of time for Fields to find a suitable position of equal stature and compensation should Fields leave NCI."
"NCI's termination of the contract with Fields and its withholding of the severance was baseless, oppressive, non-performance related and in bad faith as part of a systematic scheme to eliminate positions at NCI without regard for the rights of those persons terminated," charged the lawsuit, filed by the law firm Laxalt & Nomura Ltd.
An NCI spokeswoman said Wednesday that the institute had no comment on Fields' lawsuit.