You’ve heard the line: “It’s not about the money,” says the guy who brings a lawsuit after slipping and falling on the courthouse steps. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
Let me tell you the truth. It’s always about the money. Until it isn’t. And when that happens, you have a classic man-bites-dog story.
Consider the case of Dr. Dean Winslow, a respected doctor fired from his post as chair of medicine at Valley Medical Center two years ago.
Now a physician at Stanford, the outspoken Winslow brought a lawsuit against the county, charging that he was wrongfully terminated.
The county has now agreed to pay Winslow $1.4 million to settle that case. After his attorney’s fees are subtracted, Winslow is putting about $1 million in a trust to help Syrian and Iraqi war victims.
For the 62-year-old physician, it really was not about the money. And that fact makes his case against the county all the more notable. It’s the ultimate middle-finger salute.
The taxpayers will take the hit — the taxpayers usually take the hit for the county’s miscues — but the pain is less when you know the money will go to a good cause.
Winslow told me by email that he and his wife were working with a Palo Alto law firm to set up what they call a “Victims of War Charitable Trust.” He’s hoping for contributions from former VMC colleagues.
“I deployed three times to Iraqi Kurdistan between the first and second Gulf wars, then twice to Afghanistan and four more times to Iraq since 2001,” the decorated military doctor wrote. “So I feel a real connection to people in that part of the world.”
The background
That brings me back to the unfortunate tale of his employment with the county, which ended in August 2013 when he was fired by VMC officials and County Executive Jeff Smith.
At the time, the facts were hidden by the circling-of-wagons behind the word “personnel.” Now it seems clear that Winslow was essentially fired because he was outspoken.
Winslow, who joined VMC in 2003, complained that VMC doctors were burdened by a demand to see 20 patients a day — and that the exodus of primary care physicians was due to pressures brought by VMC administrators.
He also objected to the centralization of recruiting for doctors and castigated VMC’s patient billing system. In an email, he called one of his VMC superiors “in over his head.”
The county claimed that Winslow had “interfered” with negotiations with Stanford over training doctors at VMC, seeking to exclude Jeff Smith and chief medical officer Jeffrey Arnold from the talks.
But the case turned against the county when Judge William Elfving concluded that the Stanford claim was too dated to be a justification for Winslow’s firing.
Elfving also concluded that Winslow’s other complaints were shielded under laws intended to protect patient care. The county declined to comment and admitted no wrongdoing.
“It all worked out OK in the end, at least for me personally,” Winslow wrote me. Less so for the rest of us. But maybe some people in the scorched Mideast will benefit.
Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com. Twitter.com/scottherhold.
