By: Anna Kaminski
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — A lawyer for the Rev. Adam Hamilton’s campaign defended a recent political ad about medical debt that prompted Hamilton’s opponent, Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, to send the Democrat’s campaign a cease-and-desist warning.
The ad centers on Meischa Zimmerman, a woman who received medical care from Marshall when he was a practicing OBGYN and subsequently sued for medical debt. Zimmerman tells a camera she was arrested in front of her young daughter while eight months pregnant for missing a $50 payment to Marshall.
Charles Spies, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer for Marshall, write in a Monday letter that the ad was defamatory. The woman was one of more than 700 patients whom Marshall sued for medical debt while a practicing physician in Great Bend, and she was one of dozens arrested for failing to show up to court, according to reporting from the New York Times.
“The unmistakable message to a reasonable viewer is that Senator Marshall caused a pregnant patient to be arrested and jailed for missing a single $50 payment. That message is false in every material respect,” the letter said.
Kate Sawyer Keane, an attorney for the Hamilton campaign from Elias Law Group, said the senator’s then-medical practice, Heartland Regional OBGYN, “chose to set exorbitant interest rates to claw back his patients’ debt, sought warrants for his patients’ arrests, and then used their bond payments as a method to pay back the patients’ debt.”
“Ms. Zimmerman may not have been in a position to defend herself against Senator Marshall’s practices. Our client is,” she said. “Politicians cannot threaten and suppress the speech of those who publicize inconvenient truths about them with expensive litigation.”
She said in the letter the ad’s statements were true.
“The fact that Sen. Marshall may not want the details of his medical billing practices and patient arrests to come to light provides no basis for removing the ad or issuing a retraction,” she said.
Sawyer Keane said the Hamilton campaign will continue to broadcast the ad. Spies’ letter said Marshall anticipated litigation if Hamilton’s campaign didn’t comply with his request to take down the ad.
“If Sen. Marshall files a lawsuit, please understand that the immediate response will be a motion to strike,” Sawyer Keane said in her letter. “Should he not wish to pay the campaign’s legal fees, I respectfully submit that he should cease and desist from his threats of frivolous litigation.”