KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A little after 4 in the morning on a Tuesday last February, Carolyn Cordle emailed a few co-workers who had recently quit.
The subject line: COUP.
"I have downloaded everything that I think will be of importance," Cordle wrote, according to a lawsuit filed in December in the U.S. District Court of Western Missouri. "If there is anything (else) you think we should have, please let me know and I will see if we have access."
In the days that followed, Cordle downloaded and emailed to herself and former employees a variety of confidential documents from Coversa, the health care nonprofit where she was director of clinical services: contracts with hospitals, nurse compensation agreements, training materials and more.
Three weeks later, Cordle left Coversa. She and other former employees now run its main competitor, SANE Solutions and Consulting.
As coups go, it was a successful one.
One year ago, Coversa provided 14 local hospitals with sexual assault nurse examiners, or SANE nurses, trained in treating victims of sexual assault. Today, that number is zero. SANE Solutions and Consulting has those contracts now.
Coversa, whose attorneys declined to comment, is seeking in excess of $1 million in monetary damages. In the lawsuit, they allege that Cordle's actions were part of a larger conspiracy to steal proprietary information to help start a competing organization. They allege that Cordle and others spread false rumors about Coversa and convinced hospitals to terminate their contracts.
And they allege that the former employees used the nonprofit's facilities to prescribe unauthorized controlled substances. Those employees include a former CEO who stepped down after losing her medical license.
For their part, the defendants say the implosion of Coversa was self-inflicted.
Scott Nehrbass, the attorney representing Cordle, SANE Solutions and others named in the lawsuit, said that Coversa engaged in nepotism that imperiled its mission and that nurses left only after finding themselves locked out of the building by its new executive director.
He told The Kansas City Star that Coversa's claims are "meritless" and that this lawsuit undermines the larger goals of providing survivors with access to forensic nurses.
"They're trying to make this into a commercial litigation matter instead of a 'let's all serve the public interest' matter," he said.
Trouble at the top
Coversa, which is an acronym for Collection of Victim Evidence Regarding Sexual Assault, was founded in North Kansas City in 2000. As the name suggests, its mission was to provide survivors with nurses who are certified through specialized education and are trained in forensic examinations. These exams can sometimes take hours, and the results are often crucial pieces of evidence in the prosecution of sex crimes.
Most area hospitals do not have these specialized nurses on staff. Coversa plugged this gap by functioning as a hub for local nurses with SANE training. Hospitals contracted with Coversa, paying it fees in exchange for sending over qualified nurses when rape victims came in. The group collaborated with law enforcement, legal representatives and other local organizations like the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault, or MOCSA.
In the last five years, Coversa's attorneys say, the nonprofit has provided "trauma-informed and compassionate forensic nursing services for over 1,700 victims of sexual assault in both Missouri and Kansas."
Its current troubles date back to 2019, when its board of directors removed Rebecca Hierholzer as CEO and medical director. A physician as well as the founder of Coversa, Hierholzer was in many ways the public face of the organization, the recipient of various awards for community service and philanthropy.
In March 2019, the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, which licenses and regulates health care providers, issued an emergency order of suspension of Hierholzer's medical license.
The board's investigations are confidential, per state law, so Hierholzer's specific offense is not known. She eventually surrendered her Kansas license after the board found that allowing her to continue practicing medicine "would constitute an immediate danger to the public health, safety, or welfare." Hierholzer also, according to the board, "committed an act of unprofessional or dishonorable conduct likely to deceive, defraud, or harm the public."
The suspension of Hierholzer's medical license came as news to the Coversa board of directors, which learned of it through a story on KSHB-41. Though Coversa's attorneys said Hierholzer's violations were unrelated to her work at Coversa, an emergency board meeting was called and she was quickly relieved of her role as medical director and subsequently removed from the nonprofit's tax documents and bank accounts.
Mass exodus
In 2020, Jera Pruitt was hired as Coversa's new executive director. Pruitt is the former public administrator for Platte County, elected as a Republican in 2016.
In their complaint, Coversa's attorneys said Cordle had wanted the job. She had been with the organization since at least 2007 and was a registered SANE nurse, as well as the director of clinical services.
After Pruitt was hired instead, Cordle and credentialing coordinator Diana Layson "refused to adjust to Coversa's new leadership and became openly hostile toward the leadership team regarding changes the team was making within the organization," Coversa's attorneys write.
Nehrbass, the attorney representing Cordle, Layson, and Hierholzer, said the rift was caused not by professional jealousy but rather by the fact that Pruitt is the sister of Coversa treasurer Sara Archer. Pruitt, he said, "had never even worked for a nonprofit, never written a grant, and had no medical experience."
"Ms. Cordle did not want the job," Nehrbass said. "But she objected to it being given to the board treasurer's sister, not only because it was nepotism but also because the board treasurer's sister had no experience with and knew nothing about sexual assault nurse examiners or what they do or how to serve the public in this regard. Ms. Cordle and Diana Layson told the board they would leave if they hired the board treasurer's sister, but the board did it anyway."
Through her attorneys, Pruitt declined to comment.
On their way out, Coversa claims, Cordle and Layson conspired to unlawfully access confidential information and engaged in "tortious interference" with Coversa's business relationships. In addition to downloading various contracts with hospitals and nurses, Cordle and Layson are alleged to have also coordinated their efforts with Susan Gail-Seeley Kiger, a SANE nurse who'd previously worked with Coversa and is another defendant represented by Nehrbass.
Kiger — who was still working as an independent SANE nurse contractor for Coversa — began spreading "untrue rumors" about the organization to local hospitals, according to Coversa's complaint. She also registered the competitor company, SANE S&C, in Missouri around this time and "began soliciting COVERSA'S Nurse Partners via email to leave their positions and to work with SANE S&C for more money."
Kiger also filed a complaint with the Missouri Attorney General's Office, expressing concerns about Coversa's medical billing practices. (After reviewing it, the AG's office opted not to pursue the allegations.)
The day after Cordle left Coversa, three of its nurses terminated their contracts "without explanation," Coversa claims. More nurses followed over the next month. Without nurses, Coversa began to lose contracts with local hospitals. As a result, it lost out on federal funding, the complaint states.
By August, Coversa had functionally shut down. Saint Luke's Health System, University Health (formerly Truman Medical Center), AdventHealth Shawnee Mission and the University of Kansas Health System have their own SANE staff. But all other specialized sexual assault exams in metro Kansas City are now conducted by Cordle and Kiger's team at SANE Solutions and Consulting.
What's next?
Nehrbass emphasized that there was nothing legally exclusive about any of the relationships among the hospitals, the nurses and Coversa. No restrictive covenants, no non-compete agreements, no confidentiality agreements.
The hospitals and nurses "were not bound to Coversa; they were free to work also or instead with Ms. Cordle," Nehrbass said.
"The entire point was supposed to be to serve the public interest by providing area hospitals with SANE services, whether it is Coversa, Ms. Cordle or others doing it."
Nehrbass said Coversa collapsed because Pruitt was a poor leader.
"In the nine months that Ms. Pruitt had been employed, she had not met with the nurses or the hospitals, so the hospitals and nurses had no idea who she was," he said. "When Ms. Cordle left, Ms. Pruitt herself reached out to every hospital and nurse to let them know that Ms. Cordle was no longer affiliated with Coversa. Most hospitals then contacted Ms. Cordle."
Likewise, he said, "the only time nurses contacted Sue (Kiger) was when they found that their keys no longer worked for the Coversa office. Sue had been a supervisor for Coversa for many years and was a go-to person for all the nurses."
It was these actions — by Pruitt, not by Kiger or others trying to drum up business for their new outfit — that set in motion the migration of nurses and hospitals from Coversa to SANE Solutions, he said.
Hierholzer is not involved with SANE Solutions, Nehrbass said. In the complaint, Coversa says that it began receiving phone calls from local pharmacies last spring asking about prescriptions for controlled substances written by Hierholzer. These local pharmacies allegedly called Coversa because Hierholzer was still using its address as her place of practice, even though she was legally prohibited from prescribing drugs and hadn't been affiliated with Coversa for over two years.
The lawsuit also cites public Venmo payments between Hierholzer, Cordle, and Layson that appear to be related to pharmaceuticals, with descriptions such as "Prednisone," "prescription," "medical script," and "relax."
Hierholzer did not respond to requests for comment. Records show Hierholzer voluntarily surrendered her medical license in Missouri in July 2021, an action related to her Kansas revocation from the year before.
Nehrbass said of Hierholzer: "Dr. H is the founder of Coversa and has donated over $100,000 of her personal money to sustain Coversa. The 19 years that she was the medical director, she never accepted one penny for her services."
In the coming weeks, Nehrbass said, he will be filing a "vigorous" answer and counterclaims.
"The Coversa board chose this path," he said, "and now they have to live with it."
