(Barron's Advisor) - The Carson Group is asking a court to issue a stay that would suspend proceedings in a complaint that alleges the firm maintained a toxic culture brought by its former marketing chief, Mary Kate Gulick. She contends she was ousted after she alleged another employee sexually assaulted a colleague at a conference.
The Omaha-based advisory firm now alleges that Gulick and her team attempted to conceal communications with her medical providers and changes to her records to amplify her claims in the case.
The case turns on Gulick’s claim that the advisory firm terminated her after she complained to other Carson executives about the company’s handling of sexual-assault allegations. Gulick said she suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in connection with Carson’s handling of the matter. The company dismissed Gulick in June 2023.
Carson responded in a filing denying Gulick’s allegations, including the contention that founder and then-CEO Ron Carson opted not to terminate the employee accused of committing the assault after the allegations surfaced.
Now, in its request to the court to stay the proceeding, filed July 25 in federal court in Nebraska, Carson claims that Gulick’s team attempted to “persuade three different medical providers to alter her medical records” to bolster the claims in her lawsuit.
Carson further alleged that there are “significant and material differences” between copies of the records its lawyers received from the plaintiff and the same records lawyers received directly from Gulick’s medical providers.
“None of the alterations are apparent from the face of the documents,” Carson says. “Because the changes were embedded in the content of the records (and not disclosed by plaintiff in her discovery responses), the fact changes were made was only uncovered by defendant through extreme diligence following a meticulous review of the medical records produced by both plaintiff and her providers.”
One of Gulick’s lawyers, Tom Freeman, tells Barron’s Advisor that “we strongly dispute the allegations” in the motion to stay the case. “We are very proud to represent Mary Kate and she will not be silenced,” he says. “Our response to these recent allegations by Carson Group will be forthcoming in our legal filings.”
Carson says that a side-by-side comparison of different versions of the same records reveals more than 100 changes to the documents, “all of which were designed to amplify plaintiff’s substantive claims and emotional distress damages, and all of which were orchestrated by plaintiff after retaining counsel to represent her in a lawsuit against” Carson.
The advisory firm further suggested that the changes were made for the “purpose of inflating a claim for alleged disability claims and emotional distress damages,” orchestrated by someone “who has the technical expertise to make the changes in such a way that they are obscured until a side-by-side comparison of the records was made.”
In one phase of discovery, Carson alleges that Gulick didn’t produce the original records she received from her medical providers or the communications with those providers seeking alterations in the records.
Carson argues in its new motion that the questions about the documents and how they may have been changed have “severely compromised” the ability to complete discovery in a timely manner and asks the court for a stay to answer questions about the alleged discrepancies in the documents.
The firm contends that by relying on “fraudulent medical records to advance her claims” and disguising the efforts to alter the records, Gulick should be hit with a sanction, the most appropriate being a dismissal of the case and an order to pay Carson’s legal fees.
By Kenneth Corbin
July 30, 2025
