Teenage whistleblower beats hospital's defamation threat, expands free speech in Maine

At age 15, Samson Cournane created a Change.org petition with fellow University of Maine students and directed it to his congressman. His goal was to highlight "serious patient safety issues" at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, the second-largest hospital in the Pine Tree State.

He alleged intimidation of his mother, pediatric critical care physician Anne Yered, for protesting the purportedly unqualified director of the pediatric ICU, and her forced exit after bringing concerns to Northern Light Health's CEO on behalf of physicians. 

Cournane promoted the petition through Twitter and a letter to the editor of the student newspaper, The Maine Campus.

The hospital responded by threatening to sue Yered for defamation as her son's supposed ghostwriter, starting a two-year saga that ended Nov. 7 when the statute of limitations expired. 

Cournane told Just the News as the milestone approached that he could finally "go back to a normal social media experience, but I doubt it will ever be normal again and "I'm going to be a lot more hesitant about writing certain things in the future."

In the meantime, Cournane met with Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, a champion of whistleblowers, and received an "honorable mention" for a state youth leadership award.

His case inspired Maine lawmakers this year to pass the Uniform Public Expression Act, which faced opposition from the Maine Principals Administration in the previous session over concerns it would bless harassment of school board members. 

The measure expands the state's law against so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as SLAPPs, by shielding new categories of speech from costly meritless lawsuits, including in newspapers and social media, starting Jan. 1, 2025.

Cournane's lawyers at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression celebrated the milestone Nov. 7, two years since the "wunderkind" specifically mentioned Northern Light.

"Samson personally participated in the push to amend Maine’s anti-SLAPP law through community outreach, TV interviews, presentations, and online advocacy" and presented his story at conferences including the Government Accountability Project whistleblower conference where he met Grassley, FIRE wrote.

"Attempts to silence your critics often backfire and result in even more negative publicity," as shown by his petition jumping from 700 to 22,000 signatures, attorney Jay Diaz said.

Northern Light's lawyer and the University of Maine did not respond to queries regarding this story.

FIRE intervened in Cournane's matter in August 2023, demanding the hospital disavow "intent to sue" based on the U.S. and Maine constitutions and the state's existing anti-SLAPP law.

"Your clients’ threatened suit could bring financial ruin to his family as a result of costly litigation against a billion-dollar hospital conglomerate and would increase the significant financial and emotional distress the family has been under since his mother’s firing," Diaz wrote.

"Samson’s statements of fact are supported by personal knowledge and documentary evidence," he also wrote. "His opinions are expressions of personal judgment, based on his interpretation of facts – a well-established category of protected speech." 

He argued Cournane only went public a year after his mother's firing, when he had further researched patient-safety issues at the hospital and it rebuffed his concerns. 

"It's hard to believe that at one point hospital management even agreed to meet with me and then canceled the day and time of the meeting," Cournane told Just the News in June on LinkedIn, reaching out after seeing this reporter's profile of a fellow free-speech activist in his town, Shawn McBreairty, who took his life amid legal threats by a school district.

"Everyone expects the younger generation to right the wrongs of the previous generation, but then the previous generation provides no assistance in making it happen," the senior computer science major wrote, venting his frustration at the then-19 months he had spent as a local pariah even while being celebrated by lawmakers and press freedom groups.

The hospital refused to retract its "bogus lawsuit" threat against him after dropping his mother as a target, The Maine Campus deleted his letter to the editor against his protests, "a former classmate who will be working at the paper has unfollowed me on LinkedIn and I do get the cold shoulder from people on campus," he wrote.

His excitement about being invited to a "university computer science project in Portland" a year earlier turned to sorrow when "they paid for my hotel room but refused to allow me to participate in the project even though I was physically there," he wrote. "I've been called a crazy kid and ostracized because of a nonpartisan quest for transparency and accountability."

Cournane said the hospital threatened him in part for something a former Maine Campus editor wrote, which university lawyers called a "scary letter" and refused to help Cournane because Northern Light Health is a "major university donor." In his view, the university is "fine with me being scared" and "actively involved with trying to scare me more."

The University of Maine told Just the News it couldn't respond to Cournane's allegations without knowing with whom he spoke. Cournane didn't respond to requests for more specificity, and the hospital didn't respond at all.

The silver lining is getting to speak at the Government Accountability Project conference and talk with Grassley about the 91-year-old's decades-long effort "to have 1 day in the Rose garden to praise the positive impact of whistle blowers on society," Cournane said. He realized "how whistle blowers [sic] are seen as almost a necessary evil by the public."