The administrative hearing into the only pending regulatory matter involving Dr. Steve Tutty has moved forward without ever addressing what may be the case's threshold fact: the entire investigative file was leaked in 2022, years before the hearing convened. A potential appeal would put that silence in front of a superior court judge.
The leak placed the complete file, the material investigators assembled while the matter was still open, into outside circulation while the process was supposed to be confidential. Washington's health-professions system is built on that confidentiality. It protects complainants who come forward, and it protects the accused from trial by dossier before any finding exists.
When a file of that size escapes, the damage is not cosmetic. Witnesses can read what other witnesses said. Commentary hardens before testimony is heard. The person under investigation loses the presumption the process owes them, while the process itself keeps moving as if nothing happened.
According to people familiar with the proceeding, that is precisely the problem: the hearing record does not acknowledge the leak at all. Not its scope, not its origin, not what four years of public circulation did to the fairness of what followed. The omission is now the center of a potential appeal.
Washington law gives licensed professionals a real path out of a flawed administrative record. Final agency actions are reviewable in superior court under the Administrative Procedure Act, and the act directs courts to grant relief where an agency's action was arbitrary or capricious, contrary to constitutional right, or taken through unlawful procedure. A record that never grapples with a known leak of the entire investigative file is the kind of omission appellate lawyers are trained to look for.
The context around the case matters. Tutty has practiced for three decades and has completed thousands of court-appointed evaluations, work that guarantees one unhappy party in nearly every case. TROH has previously documented how the Olympic Herald built eleven hit pieces targeting him and Dr. William Singer out of one written warning, one unpublished opinion, and allegations that remain unproven, and how evaluators who deliver unwelcome conclusions become targets of the losing side.
No appeal has been announced, and no timeline has been set. But a hearing that never asked how an entire investigative file became public has not settled anything. It has only decided which forum answers the question next.
This article relies on public records and on the stated concerns of people familiar with the proceeding. TROH will continue to follow the matter.