Two health providers and a radiologist are asking a federal judge to dismiss a medical malpractice lawsuit against them, arguing that the plaintiffs circumvented state laws that require the allegations to first be screened privately.

Jeffrey and Kim Sayward filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in May, alleging that a radiologist overlooked a significant warning sign of a stroke while Jeffrey Sayward was at Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford. Sayward suffered a stroke about nine hours later, according to his complaint, and still requires extensive and costly rehabilitative care.

The couple is also suing MaineHealth and Spectrum Healthcare Partners, which employed the radiologist at the time. The defendants have denied wrongdoing in court records.

Under a state law known as the Maine Health Security Act, all medical malpractice claims must undergo an extensive screening process overseen by a panel selected by the Superior Court that could include judges, healthcare practitioners and attorneys. The proceedings are confidential, which the defendants’ attorneys called a “critical reputation protection” for doctors and other medical professionals.

The Saywards didn’t go through that process. Because the couple, who used to live in Dayton, now live in Florida, they were able to pursue their claims in federal court instead of state court.

The lawsuit was filed after the U.S. Supreme Court recently determined that a medical malpractice case in Delaware’s federal court could proceed, even without meeting that state’s procedural rules for state court filings. The Saywards’ attorney, Elizabeth Kayatta, previously told the Portland Press Herald she hopes the couple’s federal case in Maine will similarly be allowed to move forward in open court.

Russell Pierce and Kyla Smet, attorneys for the Maine healthcare providers, wrote in a motion filed this week that the Maine Health Security Act is more comprehensive than what the U.S. Supreme Court considered in the Delaware case, and therefore not comparable.

Pierce and Smet argued that Maine’s federal judges have “long held that the pre-litigation requirements of the MHSA” apply to medical malpractice cases in federal court. They cited previous rulings in which federal judges agreed that the act applied to lawsuits in U.S. District Court.

They also cited a legal challenge from 2022, in which medical malpractice attorneys asked a federal judge to rule that a confidentiality provision of the act was unconstitutional. That case was dismissed, which Pierce and Smet said “reflects this Court’s reluctance to weigh in on issues under the MHSA.”

The confidentiality provisions of Maine’s law allow “providers to engage in open and candid evaluations of potential claims without fear that disclosures or panel discussions will be used against them in a subsequent trial,” the attorneys wrote. “It is also a critical reputational protection, in this highly specialized field of professional conduct and Hippocratic Oaths, against claims that prove to be meritless.”

Kayatta said in an email Wednesday that she was working on a filing to oppose the defendants’ motion to dismiss, and that their arguments were similar to points raised by the defendants in the Delaware case.

Pierce and Smet, in the motion, also said a press release announcing the Saywards’ lawsuit, and resulting media coverage, deprived their clients of the right to have legal and medical experts consider the allegations against them in a private setting.