MOULTRIE — A conflict between a private medical company and an out-of-state law firm seeking clients is headed to the Georgia Supreme Court next week.

At issue is an advertisement that appeared in The Moultrie Observer last year and other newspapers, part of a statewide campaign by McHugh Fuller Law Group, a Mississippi-based law firm that specializes in nursing home abuse.

In 2015, the firm began running a statewide advertisement campaign in Georgia against PruittHealth, Inc. to win business from people who “suspect that a loved one was neglected or abused” at one of its nursing homes, according to a summary from the Georgia Supreme Court. One of the advertisements was a full-page color ad directed at the PruittHealth-Moultrie nursing home that included PruittHealth’s service marks and trade names, as well as large, capital lettered, and bold-faced red text of words such as “bedsores,” “unexplained injuries,” and “death.”

PruittHealth sued the law firm under the Georgia Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which authorizes a court to issue an injunction (a court order requiring a certain action be halted) against anyone who uses someone’s trade name without permission if there is even a “likelihood” that the use will injure the business reputation of the owner or dilute its trade name or mark. The trial court entered a temporary restraining order against the law group, scheduled a hearing and notified the parties that it intended to consider PruittHealth’s request for a permanent injunction.

The trial court issued another order on June 1, 2015, permanently stopping the law group from running ads that used PruittHealth’s trade names, service marks, or other trade styles.

The law group filed a motion for reconsideration, which the trial court denied. The law firm is now appealing to the Georgia Supreme Court.

In a similar case in 2015, the same law firm appealed a court ruling that concluded it had engaged in “false and misleading” advertising about a PruittHealth nursing home in Toccoa, Ga. In that case, the state Supreme Court threw out the permanent injunction awarded to PruittHealth based on a procedural error and remanded the case to the Stephens County court, according to the Supreme Court’s summary of the Moultrie case.

The Supreme Court expects to hear oral arguments in the Moultrie case Wednesday.

The law firm’s positions, as described by the Supreme Court summary, include:

• The trial judge issued the permanent injunction without allowing a period of discovery, the pre-trial process in which the parties are required to share documents and information to help build their case.

• The trial judge based his decision on the ad’s likelihood of diminishing the value of PruittHealth’s trademark, but the law firm argues the ad did not weaken the trademark.

• The trial court’s order is overly broad and violates McHugh Fuller’s right to free speech.

PruittHealth’s attorneys are asking the court to affirm the injunction, and they argue:

• The trial court had provided advance notice of its intent to rule on the question, so McHugh Fuller had had time to collect its information and present it at the hearing.

• The ads would decrease the value of PruittHealth’s trademark, so the judge properly used that as the basis for his decision.

• The trial court’s order was not overly broad and does not violate the law firm’s right to free speech.