Christinita Delalamon is not like the other foreign-born nurses who were sued by Global Nursing Solutions: She fought back.

Ms. Delalamon, 46, of York, was fired in 2007 after she refused to sign an extension of her contract. After the company fired her, it sued her for the $15,000 it paid for her to come to the United States.

While seven other nurses settled breach of contract suits, Ms. Delalamon took the issue to court.

She won the first round before a panel of arbitrators, but the company appealed the decision to Common Pleas Court.

On Tuesday, after a nonjury trial last week, Allegheny County Judge Eugene F. Scanlon Jr. reversed the arbitrators' decision by giving the company some damages.

Judge Scanlon awarded the company a little more than half of what it was seeking, or $7,687.50, ruling the company had made back the rest of its expenses during the three months she worked for it before being fired.

Global Nursing Solutions has had a string of troubles recently. In July, the company sued its former chief executive officer, Anthony J. Aliucci, claiming he had created a false company and then billed Global Nursing for services that the company never provided. The docket on that showed that Mr. Aliucci was served in the parking lot of Target in Cranberry, near his home in Butler County. He was most recently charged criminally in a federal case with defrauding Global Nursing of $1 million.

Ms. Delalamon, was a physician in the Philippines, where she lived in the state of Leyte. She was an anesthesiologist, but she heard about a company that was recruiting nurses for work in the United States; so in 2005 she signed a contract agreeing that if Global Nursing Solutions would pay her way to the United States, cover her immigration fees and pay for two months rental of an apartment, in exchange she would work for the company for two years.

She said she could not work as a doctor in the United States because her license would not transfer.

After she arrived in Pennsylvania in August 2006, she worked for three months in a hospital in Camp Hill, Cumberland County, but was terminated by the hospital. She said the company set her up with interviews at other hospitals but that she did not have the required certifications for the positions they needed. Finally, after three months without working, the company offered her a job in Harrisburg but asked her to sign an extension for another 30 months, which she refused. That's when the company fired her and called for her to pay it back.

Ms. Delalamon's attorney, Dan Goodyear, said the company did not have the right to fire her based on whether she would extend the contract. The company argued it was seeking repayment for its lost costs of bringing her to the United States.

Karen Rosella, the controller for Global Nursing, said the company paid nurses $25 an hour but that it charges employers between $46 and $50 an hour. The difference, she said, is not pure profit because the company does pay for its nurses' medical insurance.

She estimated that when Ms. Delalmon did not complete her contract, the company lost $30,000 to $40,000 in profits on top of the expenses it put out.

Judge Scanlon's decision gives back to the company its investment.