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The unraveling of Dr. Brian Conor Jacobs’ residency at Hershey Medical Center began with an Oct. 8 email that appeared to be from his supervisor, according to a lawsuit he filed last week.
The email informed him his long-approved paid time off for his brother’s wedding in three days had been revoked, and ended with his supervisor’s signature block. He brushed it off as a phishing attempt and went to the wedding as his brother’s best man, the lawsuit said.
But there was much more behind the email, and it ended up getting him fired from his residency, the lawsuit said.
Jacobs has been fighting since his Oct. 30 termination to convince Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center administrators his ex-girlfriend, a nurse manager at Hershey Medical Center, stole his phone and sent the email from his account, the lawsuit said.
His residency was terminated for “dishonest communications,” according to the lawsuit.
But the administrators wouldn’t give him a fair chance to contest the allegations, he said, leading to him suing three administrators on allegations they violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process during the disciplinary proceedings.
Jacobs says they wouldn’t let him review all the evidence against him, call or cross-examine witnesses, hear a presentation of the case against him and limited him to 15 minutes to defend himself during three different appeals of the decision to terminate his residency.
He’s asking the federal courts for a preliminary injunction to stall all disciplinary measures against him. In the long run, he’d like the court to order his record expunged, his residency restored and unspecified damages.
Jacobs was brought onto Penn State Hershey Medical Center’s Internal Medicine Residency Program in March 2023, and after a year of adequate performance, was renewed for two more years up into 2026.
That was cut short by the email debacle, which stemmed from an effort by Jacobs’ ex-girlfriend and others to harass and embarrass Jacobs, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit claimed the woman was bitter because Jacobs took a medical resident from another hospital to the wedding.
The situation has since “(spiraled) out of control in a way I’ve not encountered before — now involving multiple criminal investigations and law firms,” Jacobs’ attorney wrote in a March 19 email to the medical center’s general counsel.
No criminal charges have been filed against the ex-girlfriend or any of the women alleged to have been involved in the scheme, and none of them were named as defendants in the lawsuit, which focuses solely on how the disciplinary proceedings played out.
But the complaint itself delves into the backstory of how Jacobs says several women, including his ex, conspired against him. The exact circumstances of what caused several women to join together to harm Jacobs is not clear from the lawsuit.
Jacobs’ lawsuit claims the email was but one act of harassment against him.
He said his ex-girlfriend, joined by another employee of Hershey Medical Center, also created false conversations to screenshot and send to others to misrepresent Jacobs, the lawsuit said. They emailed Jacobs’ leasing office to try to cancel his lease, harassed his ex-girlfriends, sent his family HIV kits and cremation kits and sent fake screenshots to his mother to make her think he killed himself, the lawsuit said.
The ex told Jacobs’ mother she called other female employees at the hospital and arranged to meet with them the week before the wedding to discuss a plan of action against Jacobs, the lawsuit said. He used FindMyiPhone to determine his old cell-phone was located outside of the ex’s house.
Jacobs’ ex also reached out to his wedding date after the wedding and admitted to the scheme in text messages, discussing getting their stories straight, according to the lawsuit.
“Just so everyone’s on the same page I’m chalking all of that up to pregnancy and my emotional state. Our story is still good,” the ex wrote in a text message.
“He’s fired, that’s it. What are you still trying to do?” the wedding date texted. “Guys this is (expletive). It’s one email if you just said you wrote it because you were emotionally distraught or pregnant or why ever I think it would be fine.”
“I think it’s too late for that unfortunately,” the ex replied.
Jacobs’ wedding date later provided a written statement saying the ex-girlfriend was trying to “punish (Dr. Jacobs) for personal disputes independent of his professional duties” and that the other women involved tried to “manipulate testimony and shared knowledge of internal investigations” to influence the investigation.
Following Jacobs’ Oct. 30 termination, he appealed to the clinical competency committee at a Nov. 11 hearing. They rejected his appeal.
He appealed again on Jan. 22, and Dr. Nasrollah Ghahramani rejected it. After a March 22 final appeal hearing before Dr. Karl Clebak, the board upheld all prior decisions to terminate Jacobs.
Rebecca Bascom, Jacobs’ academic mentor, wrote an email to Ghahramani in November saying Jacobs was the victim of a “severe pattern of unprofessional behavior and sexual harassment” by another medical center employee.
“Being the victim of sexual harassment from someone with power over you is exceptionally difficult to endure. Gaslighting of victims by the institution compounds the injury,” Bascom said.
She urged the medical center to “ask tough questions and show flexibility in seeking solutions.”
Court documents listed Ghahramani, Clebek, and Dr. Kevin Black, interim vice dean for educational affairs at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, as defendants in the lawsuit.
All three can provide the injunctive relief being sought, the lawsuit said, but Jacobs is only seeking damages from Ghahramani and Clebek.
Penn State University and Penn State Health’s press offices declined to comment on the litigation. PennLive could not reach Jacobs’ attorneys for comment.