Countersuit
Man Submits Lyme Disease Countersuit
October 22, 1997|By JOSEPH DILEO; Courant Correspondent
BALTIMORE -- — A Maryland man, who is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by the founders of the Connecticut-based Lyme Disease Foundation, has filed a $3 million federal countersuit, complaining of defamation, tortuous interference and civil conspiracy.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by Edward McSweegan of Crofton, names as co-defendants Thomas E. Forschner and his wife, Karen Vanderhoof-Forschner of Tolland, Conn., and the foundation.
The Forschners set up the foundation in 1988.
Their son, Jamie, was born with a number of physical problems, maladies, which the couple blamed on Lyme dDisease. Mrs. Vanderhoof-Forschner said she contracted the disease from a deer tick while she was pregnant. Jamie died in 1991.
In the original lawsuit, the Forschners accused McSweegan of defamation and tortuous interference with their activities.
McSweegan works for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and, according to the original lawsuit, was responsible for disbursing federal funds to such organizations as the Lyme Disease Foundation.
In his countersuit, McSweegan denies he had such responsibility.
The Forschners say McSweegan defamed them in letters to newspapers, members of Congress and on the Iinternet by falsely accusing them of improperly using federal money given to the foundation.
McSweegan complains that the Forschners is charging the defendants with defamation, defamed him, which he said caused his employer to wrongfully discipline him.
He was removed from his position as head of the Lyme dDisease program at the National Institutes of Health in 1995 and was given a letter of reprimand.
McSweegan is seeking $1 million in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages.