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Lehman, a registered nurse, is accused of liability in the alleged wrongful death of Esther Evans, a Sanctuary patient, five days after her admission in September 2006.
Also being sued are Dr. J. Paul White, Sanctuary and John Does 1-20.
Evans’ family claims their mother was prescribed powerful medications that unnecessarily caused her to die prematurely.
They are represented by Booneville attorney Casey Langston Lott.
The defendants deny the allegations. The case is set for trial in November 2010.
Lehman pleaded guilty in June to multiple misdemeanor counts related to 11 deaths at the hospice, despite her insistence she was innocent.
The state Attorney General’s Office originally asked a Lee County grand jury to charge her with depraved heart murder or manslaughter by culpable negligence.
Diverse views
But a prosecutor said grand jurors’ views were so diverse that the misdemeanor compromise was all that could be obtained.
Lehman and White, Sanctuary’s then-medical director, were caught up in legal action brought by Attorney General Jim Hood after family members of some hospice patients complained that their deaths were suspicious or premature.
In 2008, White pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aiding and abetting the practice of medicine without a license and one felony count of cyberstalking for sending threatening e-mails to people he thought caused the investigation.
She received a small fine and he got a fine and probation.
Authorities claimed the doctor let Lehman set doses and administer narcotics, then backdated the orders she had written.