After 2 years or more of stall tactics by attorney’s representing Small Smiles Dental Center defendants, the New York trials are set to begin in three weeks! Yes, you heard me, three, count’em 1… 2,…3… weeks! Yahoo! Jury selection set to begin September 9, 2013.
Tuesday (August 14, 2013) the court ruled against Small Smiles and defendants and their plea for a Summary Judgment — essentially telling the old boys to buckle-up, quit whining, they have you by the balls, be ready for trial or start writing checks. Small Smiles Dental Centers’ former dentists (17 in total) and that nasty DeRose crew in Colorado are in for a very bumpy ride.
| Small Smiles Dental Centers NY Malpractice Defendants are: |
| Companies | Individuals |
| FORBA Holdings, LLC | Dan E. DeRose |
| n/k/a Church Street Health Management, LLC | Michael A. DeRose |
| FORBA NY, LLC | Edward J. DeRose |
| FORBA, LLC n/k/a LICSAC, NY, LLC | Adolph Padula |
| DD Marketing, Inc. | William A. Mueller |
| DeRose Management, LLC | Michael Roumph |
| Small Smiles Dentistry of Albany, LLC | Maziar Izadi, DDS |
| Albany Access Dentistry, PLLC | Laura Kroner, DDS |
| Small Smiles Dentistry of Syracuse, LLC | Judith Mori, DDS |
|
| Lissett Bernal, DDS |
| Edmise Forstal, DDS | |
| Evan Goldstein, DDS | |
| Keerthi Golla, DDS | |
| Nassef Lancen, DDS | |
| Wadia Hanna, DDS | |
| Koury Bonds, DDS | |
| Tarek Elsafty, DDS | |
| Dimitri Filostrat, DDS | |
| Yaqobb Khan, DDS | |
| Delia Morales, DDS | |
| Janine Randazzo, DDS | |
| Loc Vin Nuu, DDS | |
| Grace Yaghmai, DDS | |
| and others |
Some of the dentists say the used their best medical judgment to provide dental care to the children suing them, but evidence indicates that isn’t even close. In fact, it’s laughable! Evidence provided showed Koury Bonds, DDS and the others violated the “relevant standard on care” on several issues.
According to the ruling, there is plenty of evidence these dentists prepared and recommend treatment without clinical justification and performed substandard care.
They unnecessarily restrained children in papoose boards; extracted teeth that without clinical justification; failed to use local anesthetics, filled teeth that didn’t need to be filled; altering records; performing unnecessary baby root canals;(remember that $35 million dollar award a few weeks ago over unnecessary root canals?) failed to obtain proper informed consent for treatment from parents; just to name a few. These guys knowingly and purposefully used informed consent forms that they knew did not meet the standards or guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD).
Now, haven’t I been screaming this as loud as I can for some 6 years now. Everything I’ve uncovered and reported here about this horrible place is being proven to be the truth, and it looks like it’s going to be told in front of a jury, pretty damn quickly.
In the ruling the Judge states, “There…is ample evidence from which a jury could concluded that the defendants perpetuated a fraud on the plaintiff by treatment him and other Small Smiles patients not to meet his medical needs but as a means to maximize profits for the dentists, corporations and Individual Defendants.” (the DeRose crew)
More excerpts from the ruling:
“Email correspondence… demonstrates the overriding emphasis on profits.” One such email between Michael Roumph and the lead dentists in the Albany NY clinic states “[p]roduction per patient needs to improve.”
“In a March 10, 2006 email concerning the Rochester clinics, Roumph advised of the daily production dollar goals and stated “[b]iggest problem continues to be production per patient and Rochester is lowest in the company so far in the month of March.”
“In a March 22, 2006 email from Roumph to the lead dentist in the Albany clinic he advises “Maybe we talk to docs about doing 1 more procedure per visit. Then the next month we do the same thing, 1 more procedure per visit.”
“The next month Roumph updated the Rochester clinic income noting “as we have discussed, best way to reach that [budget goal] is improving production per patient.”
“In a 6/12/05 email from Roumph regarding Syracuse clinic production: “The good news is we have all the patients we need, the bad news is we haven’t been able to do much with them.”
“For example, the January 31, 2007 report stated that the Rochester “per patient production and # of cases over $500 SUCKS.
“…May 30, 2007 report criticized the Syracuse clinic for “poor PPP” [production per patient’, noting that hygiene conversation are terrible.”
The judge feels there is ample evidence, that if seen by a jury, would “support an award of punitive damages.”
Remember, I told everyone right here on this blog about the hygiene department being forced to “convert” children from just a simple cleaning to more extensive work, whether it was needed or not. They wanted to get the child and bill as much as they could before the child escaped the building, since chances were high they wouldn’t be back.
There must be thousands of documents and emails as evidence of fraud, abuse, malpractice and greed! Personally I can’t wait until a jury gets to see just how kind nasty and wretched this company, was, and still is to this day!
Here is the Ruling:
Small Smiles Summary Judgment Ruling 08-14-2013
Think 5 years from now we will be seeing evidence of the same practices happening today at Small Smiles, when even more cases make it to court? I do. After all, there was the report issued by Senator’s Baucus and Grassley just three weeks ago, and we still have HHS/OIG defending their position to keep the clinics open and keep sending them our tax dollars!
Friggin Amazing!!
This is one company that apparently plans to keep on giving attorney’s plenty of work for years to come. I suspect as long as they are still open, there will be malpractice cases being filed. What I wonder is just how much is AIG willing to hand over to plaintiffs before they wake up and smell the coffee and stop insuring these assholes.
The filing of the bankruptcy of this company has no effect on these and future cases whatsoever, is my understand. Plus, I think the DeRose’s might be have their personal assets at risk. That would be a rotten shame, wouldn’t it?
NOT!
PS Here is the Memorandum of Law written in Objection to their Motion for Summary Judgment. Might as well get a head start on reading it, I’ll have more on this in the next day or two. Let me just say, it ROCKS!!
| Happy Happy Happy |