Jury will consider whether Mount Auburn Hospital discriminated against a black doctor from Belize

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today a veteran doctor who decided to get additional training as a resident at Mount Auburn can pursue his discrimination claim over his firing in 2005.

A Superior Court judge had dismissed Bernard Bulwer's lawsuit against the hospital - which also included charges of defamation and "tortious interference" with his hospital contract - but the appeals court said there was enough evidence of possible discrimination to warrant having a jury consider whether he was fired because of his race and national origin.

Bulwer had already been a practicing physician for 16 years - with three books and 40 scholarly articles to his credit - when he applied to and was accepted for the two-year residency program at Mount Auburn. Before the end of his first year, though, he was fired, citing alleged serious deficiencies in his work in some of the departments through which he rotated.

The appeals court said that the hospital failed to follow its own regulations for residents facing dismissal - Bulwer was not allowed to attend the last two days of a three-day committee meeting determining his fate and wasn't even told the committee would be considering firing him.

Add that to the way doctors who defended Bulwer's work were harshly criticized by other doctors who didn't like him, the fact the hospital seems unable to retain minority doctors and even the way "white supremacist doctrine" was left in a staff room and Bulwer is entitled to a jury trial on the discrimination claim, the court ruled.