Judge Freezes Personal Assets of HRC Medical Owners' Wives

By Jennifer Kraus Consumer Investigator

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - There's a new development in the state Attorney General's case against HRC Medical, the former hormone replacement company based here in Nashville.

A judge has now agreed with prosecutors that the wives of the men running HRC were in on the efforts to divert more than a million dollars from the company.

For years, Dr. Dan Hale was the face of HRC Medical, the one who publicly touted the benefits of his company's hormone replacement therapy while his brother Don Hale worked behind the scenes running the business end of things.

Now both men's wives find themselves embroiled in the state of Tennessee's lawsuit against HRC. A judge has ordered that both Bonnie and Dixie Hale's assets be frozen.

Last fall, the Attorney General sued HRC alleging the company had put thousands of patients' lives in danger by failing to warn them about the risks and side effects of their so-called bio-identical hormone therapy.

A Davidson County judge previously ruled there was evidence that Dan and Don Hale had been fraudulently diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company to their own personal accounts after learning of the state's investigation and pending lawsuit. Now that same judge says she's found enough evidence to believe the Hales' wives were involved in this too.

The judge ruled the evidence showed both women got payments of nearly half a million dollars each from HRC when the company claimed it was insolvent, that Dixie Hale wrote a check for more than a million dollars to herself from HRC accounts to purchase a home, and that Don and Dixie Hale tried to hide how they used more than $40,000 from HRC to buy a new BMW last Christmas.

By freezing Bonnie and Dixie Hale's assets along with their husbands, the state hopes one day it'll be able to give some of that money to former HRC patients who suffered because of the treatments they received.

The state expects the case to eventually go to trial.

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Judge Freezes Personal Assets of HRC Medical Owners' Wives