Landlords again attempt to oust Bristol abortion clinic from its building

Another attempt to oust the abortion clinic in Bristol from the building it occupies on Osborne Street was recently made by its landlords, but the clinic’s owner said she will fight it while she looks for another location.

Either way, clinic owner Diane Derzis said again Thursday that she is determined to remain open in Bristol.

“The clinic will definitely stay open,” she said. “As these [abortion] bans continue and these crazy states surrounding Virginia continue this nonsense, it just makes it even more important that we be here for these women who need us.”

On April 30, the building’s owners sent a letter to the clinic, Bristol Women’s Health, stating that they were giving 30 days’ notice that the lease will be terminated.

Derzis said her reaction to the letter was: “Here we go again. … It’s a dog-and-pony show.”

On May 10, Derzis’ lawyer, Alexis Tahinci, filed an emergency motion for a temporary injunction to stop the clinic’s eviction.

“Without one, Bristol Women’s Health will be evicted and forced to close its doors,” the motion states. “Given the lack of other suitable medical space in the surrounding area, and the costs the clinic will incur should it be forced to move at this time, it is likely that the clinic’s closure will be permanent. This will inflict irreparable harm on the clinic, its staff and the women it serves.”

A four-hour hearing was held May 30 in Bristol Circuit Court, but Judge Sage Johnson has yet to issue a ruling.

The judge also hasn’t ruled on the original lawsuit filed in December 2022 by Kilo Delta — a company owned by the building’s owners, brothers Chase King and Chadwick King — against the clinic, or on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Tahinci. A motions hearing on the lawsuit was held in May 2023.

Derzis said she has wondered whether the eviction letter was designed to spur the judge to rule on the lawsuit.

The suit, which also seeks to terminate the lease, accuses the clinic of fraud, claiming it did not reveal that abortions would be performed on site. The Kings claim they have suffered personal and professional losses as a result of owning a building where abortions are performed.

Derzis has denied that claim of fraud, saying she never tried to hide the fact that the clinic would provide abortions. Her attorney pointed out in court and in court documents that such claims of fraud are supposed to be filed in a timely manner, not six months after the lease started. She also has said that the Kings accepted the first and second payments for the first year of the lease before filing the lawsuit.

The lease took effect June 1, 2022, and the clinic opened later that summer. The lease was for one year with renewal options for a second year and then two three-year options, which the clinic is exercising, Tahinci said.

She also said the lease is a contract, and it includes no provision for termination.

Prior to receiving the termination notice, the clinic had already sent in lease payments for June and July, which exercised the renewal option for the next year, she added.

In the termination letter, however, the attorneys for the landlords said the checks would not be accepted and they would be voided and returned to the clinic.

William Wampler III and Terry Kilgore, a Republican state delegate from Scott County, are the attorneys for the King brothers. Attempts to reach them for comment were unsuccessful.

In a June 18 order, the judge said that he will take the motion for a temporary injunction under advisement, and that the building’s owners should accept the June and July 2024 lease payments. Doing so will not be construed as acceptance or renewal of any optional term or waiver or abandonment of claims, the order said.

Derzis, a Virginia native who lives in Alabama, said the clinic remains busy, particularly since the ban on abortions after six weeks in Florida took effect May 1. She said most patients are from out of state, and the clinic has seen patients from all 12 Southern states that have heavily restricted abortions since Roe v. Wade, which made access to an abortion a federal right in the U.S., was overturned in 2022.

That decision, which allowed individual states to restrict or ban abortions, came just weeks after the clinic’s lease took effect. Derzis owned the abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi, which was at the center of the case. It is now closed.

The Bristol clinic, which provides medical and surgical abortions and offers birth control, has received a lot of attention because of its location in a city that’s split between Virginia, where abortions are legal, and Tennessee, which has almost a total ban on abortions. It is also the region’s only abortion clinic.

For decades, a clinic on the Tennessee side of Bristol had offered abortion services. That clinic closed in anticipation of the tightening abortion restrictions in the Volunteer State, and Derzis worked with the doctor who had operated that medical practice to open the new clinic. Like its predecessor, the current clinic regularly draws abortion protesters.

The number of abortions performed there has increased every year since it opened, according to Derzis. So far this year, she said that 1,500 to 1,800 abortions have been performed at the Bristol clinic.

A search for another building in Bristol has been going on since shortly after the problems surfaced with the landlords, Derzis said.

Even two vacant fast-food restaurant buildings were considered, but they would have required significant repairs and remodeling, according to an affidavit from Karolina Ogorek, the clinic’s administrative director. She also estimated that it would cost about $100,000 just to move some of the medical equipment such as operating tables, which she said can’t be handled by regular moving companies.

Derzis says she has spent a lot of money to repair the building, which had been vacant for years before the clinic moved in, and to equip it to serve as a medical clinic. But she added that she hopes to find a suitable alternative soon because “no one wants to go through this kind of stuff all the time.”

“So, if there had been a good substitution we would have taken it,” she said. “We’ve certainly looked for other places, but none of them were big enough, or they were in Tennessee, unfortunately.”

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