Broward Health general council Lynn Barrett as North Broward Hospital District holds a special board meeting, Feb. 10, 2016, to discuss pending investigations. Photo: Michael Laughlin/South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The former general counsel at a South Florida public hospital system was cleared Monday of alleged criminal violations of the state's Sunshine Law.

Broward County Judge Christopher Pole dismissed one count of solicitation and one count of conspiracy to violate open meetings law against Lynn Barrett, the former top lawyer at the North Broward Hospital District in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which markets itself under the brand name Broward Health. The same misdemeanor charges against four other former or current Broward Health officials also were dismissed after the judge found no violation of the Sunshine Law. In a 4-2 vote of the board last November, Barrett was ousted from her role.

Barrett could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Bob Martinez of Colson Hicks Eidson, said in an interview that the December 2017 charges stemmed from one-on-one meetings in late 2016 between individual Broward Health board members and outside lawyers. Barrett, he added, also attended some of those meetings, which she coordinated so that the outside attorneys could inform the leaders of an alleged violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute at one of the district's hospitals that, pursuant to the terms of a $69.5 million False Claims Act settlement that North Broward entered into in 2015, would have to be reported to the federal government.

Under the Florida Sunshine Law, gatherings of two or more members of a public body to discuss official business must be open to the public—a mandate that does not apply to Barrett since she is a Broward Health staff member, not a board member, Martinez argued.

The state, however, countered the informational briefings that Barrett and the outside lawyers provided to the board members were so-called de facto meetings—an argument the judge rejected after a 2½-hour hearing.

Barrett “wasn't a conduit or intermediary between the board members; no one was,” Martinez said. “The judge found there was no violation of the Sunshine Law and no intent [to violate it], either civilly or criminally.”

Although Florida's public records and meetings laws are among the strongest nationwide, criminal charges for alleged violations are rare. In a statement, Broward Assistant State Attorney Tim Donnelly, who prosecuted the case, said the office “will review the judge's written order as soon as it is issued, and we plan to appeal the decision.”

Barrett became GC at the nation's 10th largest hospital system in July 2015. Before joining the embattled public hospital system, she was chief ethics and compliance officer at Jackson Health System in Miami, and worked in the law firms Roetzel & Andress and Jones Walker. Also a member of the New York Bar, she graduated from New York University School of Law in 1991.

A civil lawsuit against Barrett and other Broward Health officials containing many of the same allegations in the criminal indictment is pending.