A Times Editorial

A chance to agree

A letter from a retired state Supreme Court chief justice to the city of St. Petersburg should serve as a reminder of just how close the city and Bayfront Medical Center are to a resolution without a lawsuit.

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 28, 2000

Ben Overton, a retired state Supreme Court chief justice, has spent much of his legal career advocating alternatives to litigation and is currently chairman-elect of the American Bar Association's standing committee on alternative dispute resolution. He is also a former Pinellas County resident who knows more than a thing or two about St. Petersburg's city government and the hospital, Bayfront Medical Center, it once operated.

As such, Overton's recent letter to the city of St. Petersburg should both please and embarrass Mayor David Fischer.

The letter offers Overton's mediation services free of charge to bring the hospital, which is now run by a private nonprofit corporation and leases its land from the city, and the city to the negotiating table one more time to try to amicably settle a dispute about religion and medical services. The hospital is now part of a consortium, BayCare Health System, that includes Catholic hospitals and has required Bayfront to follow a set of religious and ethical directives. Those directives led Bayfront to eliminate elective abortions.

But the letter from Overton, who was approached in February to mediate the dispute, also reveals his own dismay with the precipitous lawsuit that St. Petersburg's attorneys filed on March 30. "When we recessed the mediation, a new oral proposal had been suggested by Bayfront and BayCare that all appeared to agree was a significant breakthrough and could be the foundation of a settlement agreement," Overton wrote. "Since that time, suits have been filed by the city in federal court and Bayfront in state court."

Oddly, when Fischer was asked at the time why his attorneys filed the lawsuit, he said, "They don't feel we are getting anywhere." Is Overton or the mayor mistaken?

To his credit, Fischer met personally with Bayfront board chairman Dr. Larry Davis, who has pushed BayCare to provide a true commitment to allow Bayfront to be exempt from the religious directives. To their credit, the city's attorneys and Bayfront's attorneys met Thursday in what both describe as a productive meeting that "opened the lines of communication." Neither side has yet to take Overton up on his offer for free mediation. But his letter serves as an important reminder of how close both sides are to resolution.

Lawsuit or not, there is still chance for a breakthrough. The mayor should seize it.

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