Marc Goldstone and Joe Truhe, formerly the two lead attorneys for the North Broward Hospital District, are being investigated for possible criminal charges of practicing law without a license, according to a source with knowledge of the case.
The attorneys were fired in mid-May amid allegations by the public health care district's Board of Commissioners that Goldstone and Truhe had not fully informed the board about how they would become licensed by the Florida Bar. Both lawyers moved here from out of state.
It's just the latest, strangest twist in a scandal-ridden few months for the hospital district.
Commissioner Joseph Cobo is being investigated by the same assistant
state attorney, David Schulson, after an internal ethics probe found
that Cobo may have improperly mingled his public role with his private
occupation as a health care consultant.
But the investigation of Goldstone and Truhe is more perplexing. Documents reviewed by Juice
suggest that in fact Goldstone and Truhe had been open about how they
intended to gain admission to the Florida Bar. Yesterday, Truhe filed
suit against the district, also naming Commissioner Robert Bernstein
and acting general counsel Sam Goren as defendants for allegedly
conspiring to fire him for reasons other than those offered publicly.
What's
more, it seems that if Goldstone and Truhe had a nefarious plan to
practice law without a license, then their plot would have been sniffed
out by the two members of the Florida Bar who had a role in their
employment at the district: former chief operating officer (and current
state appeals court judge) Spencer Levine, and chief human resources
officer Dionne Wong, as mentioned in this Juice post of last week.