And since the last few days have underscored just how much I HATE lawyers . . . especially the oily corporate ones (but even those not quite as much as the really malignantly narcissistic ones who fancy themselves better than the rest of us and slither on over to politics) . . . for what they have done to this country, to my profession, and to me personally over the years . . . I thought I'd go ahead and blog about the posts and then fade back into my break.
Fair warning: This is a post that has lots of WORDS (something that seems to bother some of Greensboro's blogging set), and moves way beyond the easy sound bite. So before you get started, you might want to pour yourself some coffee, Pepsi-Cola (it is North Carolina after all) or iced tea . . . or even pop-the-top on a cold one (if you live in Asheboro, it's much easier to do that now - even on Sundays).
First, we had a blogging bone thrown my way by Edward Cone-of-the-Moses-Cone-Healthcare-System-Cones, referencing this "investigative" piece on NPR. I don't regularly read Ed anymore - I was alerted to the post by a few hits from StatCounter.
From the "On the Media" intro:
One of the least known and most lethal threats to free speech is a kind of lawsuit known as a SLAPP. It's an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, and it's used by free speech advocates to describe meritless lawsuits intended to spend critics into silence.
And here's what Greensboro's premier blogging-journalist said (I had to blink several times):
"This is the kind of lawsuit used unsuccessfully against Dr. Mary Johnson in Asheboro."
(I took the liberty here of inserting the link to the recent Housecalls post that details the experience into Cone's comment - as Edward only linked the blog - which I thought kind of odd - IF he really wanted to drive his point home.)
Like I said, when I saw the post at Word-Up, I had to blink. I didn't quite know how to take the "link-love" or Cone's trite characterization of what happened . . . "unsuccessfully" in this case being technically true, but a grossly inaccurate portrayal of what REALLY happened.
In short, Ed was being just like those lawyers I hate.
And given our past history, I had to wonder . . . what exactly was Ed's game?
I mean, the biggest reason that SLAPP suits are "one of the least known and most lethal threats to free speech" (especially locally) is because journalists like John Robinson (the Greensboro N&R) and David Renfro (Asheboro's Courier Tribune) and Edward Cone have not examined them more closely as they were going down . . . or troubled themselves to identify/expose these lawsuits to the largely ignorant masses for what they are.
It was my biggest frustration way back when.
You see, by definition, these lawsuits are filed by the people/organizations with the money and the power, with the sole intent of financially bullying & emotionally battering a lesser-being/"nobody" they have already wronged into submission and silence. In my case, it was a counter-suit . . . to the lawsuit I had filed the year before against Randolph Medical Associates.
Insult following injury and all that.
Unfortunately, in their reporting, our oh-so-noble-truth-seeking-newspapers, tend to play to the economic best interests of the First Amendment evil-doers (aka "rich dochebags" or "hosebags", or, in my case, the "non-profiteers" totally cushioned and insultated by taxpayer dollars) trying to apply the gag and suppress the speech.
(You cannot say anything bad about our local hospitals. People need to completely trust them. Or they'll move to another "market" down-the-road-apiece. One of the nice things about central & Piedmont, North Carolina is that you DO have a lot of choices.)
And playing to the "rich douchebags" is EXACTLY what our local mainstream media did to me. Randolph Hospital's lawsuit - alleging that I was "a liar" was front-page-above-the-fold news in my hometown newspaper when it was filed.
My Mother and Father got to read that. My friends too . . . not to mention, ALL of my ex-patients/parents and anyone who might have helped finance a new practice (or patronize it) had I ever been able to get one back up off the ground.
But the settlement in my favor TWO YEARS later . . . completely debunking Randolph's slur . . . was reported as a second-page "shortake".
David (and Bonnie) Renfro were covering the tracks of the big guns bigtime.
(The Courier has a new Editor and a glitzy new website. But nothing has really changed.)
Now all of that was bad enough. But it has been NOTHING compared to my turn in the local blogosphere - after being invited here by the Editor of the Greensboro N&R (John Robinson) who had teamed up with area bloggers (like occasional columnist Edward Cone) to promote something called "citizen journalism".
They talked a good game, but the same "routine brusque web style" that Ed (with his keen analytical eye) and his pals at Word Up so "objectively" and liberally used to pound me and my already-pummeled psyche & self-esteem into the ground has NEVER, EVER been directed at ANY of the players-that-I've-so-openly-accused-of-wrongdoing at Randolph or Cone Hospitals.
The ultimate delicious irony in this particular "unsuccessful" SLAPP suit being that Robert Morrison and Steven Eblin, officers of "non-profit" Randolph Hospital REPEATEDLY LIED UNDER OATH in the discovery phase of their own "libel" lawsuit - a ploy to minimize the damages they ultimately paid out.
But Bob Morrison & Steven Eblin still run Randolph . . . this after driving two excellent Pediatricians (recruited to Asheboro with Federal money) out of town under totally false pretenses (AGAIN, to cover up a mess made by a Cone-owned doctor). They still collect their phat salaries and benefit packages. They still plot and hob-nob and scheme with the Cone system to boost their market share. And the obviously ethically-challenged, toothless Randolph Hospital Board of Directors that stood by and let them do what they did, has been under no pressure whatsoever to fire these jerks or own up . . . because every MSM journalist in the area turned a blind eye to what these non-profiteers did and why they did it . . . mostly because it was in the economic best interests of the hospitals involved (not to mention their own advertising budgets) to do so.
Now Ed and JR and the rest of the journalists (who cannot figure out why their readers don't trust them anymore and their "industry" is puttering out like a life-long smoker with COPD) will huff and puff and tell you that my very hard feelings about the way they've done their jobs has no basis in fact (I'm a "disgruntled former employee"). But the facts in this case speak for themselves, and actions much more so than words.
And in Ed Cone's case, given the high-minded hype that lured me to this ether, a "sound-bite" bone thrown from Word-Up now doesn't make up for that.
You see, I've been in this blogosphere for over five years . . . and for all of that time have been played-with like a cat would play with a mouse by Edward Cone (I'm sure local bloggers remember the interview "carrot" Ed dangled not long ago). As they wish me "well", Cone and Robinson have smugly taunted that I have a blog and a forum now, and people can take or leave my story. "Tell it to that other Randolph County miscreant/malcontent, Bledsoe" is their mantra.
But the several hundred hits I might get at Housecalls on a good day in NO WAY compares to the exposure/attention/ACTION this story/blog could've gotten IF someone in the local MSM had reported it - and our local journalism gurus know it.
Mary had to be kept in her little box - and the lid tightly shut.
Edward-Cone-of-the-Moses-Cone-Healthcare-System-Cones now has the gall to post pseudo-sympathetically about my ordeal (an ordeal that his high-minded journalistic indifference has contributed mightily to) all the while wringing his hands about the ominous threat to "free speech" . . . and I'm supposed to be grateful? Moreover, he can do it all with a straight face?Is he serious?
So I really did have to ask myself: Was Cone's post some kind of prelude to a bait & switch?
We do, after all, have the cyberstalker case coming up soon. Will Edward Cone/Roch Smith, Jr./Jeff Martin (Fecund Stench)/et. al. be trying to discredit the "doctor-they-would-LOVE-for-you-to-think-is-crazy", by likening a legitimate criminal (misdemeanor) complaint over Martin's threatening e-mails (which then progressed to abusive/brazenly libelous posts on his blog . . . and then creepy/menacing anonymous comments that have served to effectively shut down ALL comments and the free speech on THIS blog) to these meritless/evil/expensive/soul-sucking SLAPPS?
Or is Ed trying to tickle a little recent history and embarrass his uber-critic, conservative local lawyer Sam Spagnola (not that Sam doesn't deserve it for the stunt he pulled) as an election approaches?
Perusing Ed's post was kind of like reading a school history textbook that's been recently revised & edited to be politically correct.
So I posted a response that more accurately put into perspective the effect Randolph Hospital's despicable "libel-that-wasn't" suit has had on my life and career (a point that seems to have been thoroughly lost on Edward Cone . . . what with the rumored trust-fund and stable job and the happy family untouched by the colder, harsher realities that some of the rest of we less-well-named, much harder-working "ordinary" types have endured):
Oh please, Ed. Randolph's SLAPP was VERY successful. Let's review:
(1) My reputation locally as a physician was trashed from the day it was filed. The filing of the suit - branding me a "liar" - made all the headlines. The settling of it (in my favor) notsomuch.
(2) I spent many thousands (money I did not have) defending it - and was not reimbursed for attorney's fees.
(3) I've not been able to get ANYONE ANYWHERE (especially any champions of justice or healthcare reform or free speech) to CARE that the "non-profit" executives who used the legal system as a battering ram to SHUT ME UP lied repeatedly UNDER OATH in the discovery phase of their own BOGUS "libel" lawsuit - defrauding me at settlement and completely destroying ANY CHANCE I had to come back home and re-establish my practice.
(4) We're going on twelve years of medico-legal crap - and every dream I ever had trashed. I get to work four hours from my home and my family, because (after a black-ball) no one within the sphere & influence of Cone will even look at my CV. I'm "disruptive", you see . . . first for intervening to stop/then reporting malpractice . . . then for fighting back.
(5) And OBTW, because I've fought so hard and for so long, I get to be excoriated online by local journalists and bloggers who've smugly told me that what I've been through is "not relevant" to anything . . . not to mention cyber-stalkers who think its hysterical to threaten to report me to the authorities (for being "crazy"), and libel me on their blog. Everybody thinks that's a real hoot.
And DO NOT even get me started on the legal opinions of Sam Spagnola - or his temperament & qualifications for public office.
I'd say Randolph Hospital was VERY successful. LETHAL is actually a really good word.
Moving on along . . . but NOT EVER getting over it . . .
Of course, Ed could not concede that point gracefully. And it's his pithy, deliberately misleading response that REALLY pissed me off . . . using the bone he'd thrown to back-handed slap me in the face . . . with a comment that obviously was designed to negate every second pf my five years in this blogosphere:
"Unsuccessful" in that the suit was dropped and Dr. Johnson was awarded a cash settlement.
But as the article and Dr. Johnson make clear, the toll of these suits can be heavy no matter what.
Ah yes. Edward's faux "gotcha". The "cash settlement" that I "accepted" . . . (watching my language) the totally-fricking-inadequate-negotiated-in-bad-faith-on-a-pack-of-lies "cash" settlement that left me with very little to show for six humiliating/lost-in-a-deep-dark-hole years of my life.
Yeah right Ed, less than one year's salary (and no reimbursement for the attorney's fees) should cover all that.
You see, Edward KNOWS that if you mention that the "rich" doctor got a "cash settlement", you'll throw the dogs off the scent. No matter how hard a doctor may have studied and worked to earn it . . . or how badly he/she may have been crapped upon by the suits-with the taxpayer-funded-PR-machines . . . people naturally resent doctors their "success".
Even the dumber lawyers told me that.
Moreover, since we're not talking about Ed's life, his career or his "cash", it's okay for Mary to have been legally-battered like a baby seal.
So. Nice try, at minimizing the damages, Mr. CONE-OF-THE-CONES. I wonder. Have you been chatting up your family members at Tuggle-Duggins (the law firm that filed the FALSE answers under Oath for Randolph's executives) . . . or perhaps even on the Boards/Foundations of Cone Hospital (the organization that employed the doctor whose actions, in the spirit of "cooperative relationships", Randolph Hospital tried to shield)?
Oh. I forgot. The critically-ill-newborn-infant-who-wasn't-even-my-patient that I went in to help in the middle-of-the-night wasn't your daughter either.
Silly me.
With all of the people-who-in-no-way-deserve-them demanding "apologies" lately, and the heavy professional & personal/emotional "toll" that even Edward Cone now acknowledges Randolph's SLAPP suit took (and continues to take), I'd like to state right here and now that (much like the City of Greensboro and David Wray) there are three local law firms and two "non-profit" hospitals and several (useless/toothless) oversight agencies that owe Dr. Mary Johnson & her family a great big apology . . . and back pay . . . and punitive/compensatory damages.
But the journalists' theory is that it happened too long ago. Dr. Mary needs to just "get over it" and "move on".
Not gonna happen. Hold on tight people. Just hold on tight.
And/so Edward-Cone-of-the-Cones was not going to get away with his "she got a cash settlement and that negates everything else" pith:
As the article and Dr. Johnson make clear, the "cash settlement" (that you and Roch Smith, Jr. and others keep throwing in my face) was NEGOTIATED IN BAD FAITH ON A PACK OF LIES, was GROSSLY INADEQUATE for the damage done, and was HARDLY "awarded".
It's why I'm in the blogosphere, Ed. NO ONE should have to go through something like this.
IF it were so "clear" to everyone the "heavy toll" that all this has taken (and since our local newspaper Editors don't think my story is "relevant" to anything, making that clear to the kept-in-the-dark masses hasn't happened), the "non-profiteeers" who did this to a doctor in public service would have been investigated and UNDER INDICTMENT for PERJURY, CONTEMPT and FRAUD.
Randolph would have been SANCTIONED . . . by NC & USDHHS and/or JCAHO.
The lawyers involved (including my own) would be answering to the State Bar.
But tell me again that Governor Dumpling & the progressive blues touting healthcare reform in Raleigh & Washington care about "ethics".
In a very real sense, Randolph Hospital did not even pay out "the award". The taxpayer paid for this party . . . from the wasted Federal funds that brought Dr. Anderson and I to Asheboro (courtesy of ZERO oversight from DHHS & the NHSC), to the legal fees paid out to the crafty/creative/lying hospital lawyers (at Smith-Moore & Tuggle-Duggins).
Moreover, the well-connected, Teflon-coated executives who did this are still running Randolph, and still "cooperating" with Cone Hospital - getting their phat salaries and bonuses.
So again, I'd say I got SLAPPED down pretty hard (not just by Randolph) - and the lawsuit was VERY SUCCESSFUL.
I'm not in this ether for my health. But hey, thanks for the crumb thrown from Greensboro's ivory tower of citizen journalism & blogging.
How many years has it been?
Now, at that point, I was bracing myself for what we here in Blogsboro call a good "Coning". But then, Connie Mack Berry, Jr. (aka "Brother Hood" and husband to former judicial candidate Rachel Hunter) rode in to take my back.
(If you really wanna talk about uber-omnious threats to political free speech - whether you agree with it or not, Rachel's appeal of the N.C. State Bar's BOGUS/un-Constitutional disciplinary action should be due soon.)
And Connie, God bless him, NAILED it on the head (I've corrected for spelling):
In the HOOD Doc, it's called being bitch-slapped by the rich establishment dudes who couldn't care less about you or who was paying for it (and hey, that's not relevant) . . . Just as long it was not them personally, nor them going to the slammer for lying out of their cotton-picking rich asses!
On that note, with "holding on tight" still in mind, I move on to the mighty Orac's never-ending battle against all things of a medically-wooish nature (including apparently, my innocent fondness for magical magnetic Jesus bracelets).
This week, Orac gave the North Carolina Medical Board a spanking. And I must say, I enjoyed someone else giving them hell for a change.
This time, Orac railed against a consent order that the NCMB entered into with Dr. Rashid Buttar, DO . . . after almost a decade of "investigation" . . . entering a formal reprimand into the doctor's professional record . . . yet effectively putting an end to any substantive oversight of his "unconventional" and unorthodox" treatments of cancer and children with autism/developmental delay.
One of those "treatments" involving taking an autistic child's urine, filtering it and injecting it back into the child.
I mean, really people. That's just fricking child abuse. But this man is on the streets of North Carolina and still practicing medicine. Meanwhile the Medical Board stood by (and still stands by) deaf, dumb and blind, while Randolph Hospital did everything it could to DESTROY ME because I don't play on "teams" that let newborn babies die?
Instead of being sent to the sideshow carnival where (IMHO) he belongs, the man has made millions . . . bringing in patients to his "clinic" from "42 states and 37 countries". In newspaper write-ups he has complained that the Board's investigation is the equivalent of a "witch hunt" and has likened Thom Mansfield & company to "a rabid dog".
Now, I expect that taxing the millions Dr. Buttar has made, and servicing the patients who have come to his clinic has made the good-ole-boys running Huntersville, North Carolina very happy . . . an economic bright light in otherwise bad times. It's much like the argument Schmidly and company used to bring alcohol to Asheboro: "That firewater will make us rich . . . nevermind the unintended consequences".
It's all good. Nevermind what your economy is based on. So much for "sunshine".
In turn, those good-ole-boys running Huntersville no doubt helped lobby the good-ole-boys in Raleigh to modify the Medical Practice Act last year in such a fashion that accommodates "alternative medicine" to the point that it allows the good Dr. Buttar to continue employing treatments that "have not been proven effective by "randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies" . . . treatments whose value and effectiveness patients "may have undue expectations" of.
I actually blogged about the changes to the Medical Practice Act as they went down last year (NC Senate Bill 958). But at the time, I had other concerns . . . being a real doctor (as opposed to a Butthead practitioner of woo) who has actually been on the wrong end of a real witch hunt (for intervening to stop, and then reporting malpractice in a mill-town hospital run by rich white men who just wanted the "arrogant & cliquish/dime-a-dozen" girl-doctor to shut up and roll with EVERY sucker-punch they threw). In short, I still have a HUGE problem with the North Carolina Medical Board requiring duties of physicians that it does not protect or defend . . . and giving people who will not sign their names credence (so much for due process), and hospitals blanket legal immunities . . . thus selling medical whistleblowers out.
As Orac points out, in this particular case, the Board's consent order with Dr. Battar amounts to a whole lot of nothing . . . much like the joke-of-a-resolution that ended the Melvin Levine case (at least in North Carolina).
Dr. Buttar is essentially free to practice his woo and quackery (under Thom Mansfield's watchful eye - oooooooh, I'm scared) . . . offering false hope to desperate and very sick people . . . playing on their fear . . . bilking them of their money . . . and unimpeded by a Medical Board whose JOB it is to protect patients from those who would sell them snake oil.
I dropped a comment at Orac's fairly early on in the thread (citing the astute observation of another reader):
"Everything is legal unless there's substantial evidence that it's more harmful than beneficial."
Yep, DC. You got that right. And PUHLEASE don't get me started on the NC Board's deep sense of ethics or morality. They fancy themselves one of the most "progressive" medical boards in the nation, but EVERYTHING is political. And when it comes to bad medicine, between Thom Mansfield and Roy Cooper, both doctors and patients in NC are SCREWED.
The man has brought in MILLIONS with this woo. That makes him an ECONOMIC ASSET to the state. And that is the ONLY thing that matters.
OBTW, take it from me, the VERY LAST THING ON EARTH that the North Carolina Medical Board can be likened to is "a RABID DOG".
Only if the dog is blind, deaf, dumb, missing ALL of its teeth, post-ictal and comatose/at the brink of death.
And there you have it, dear readers. Rashid Battar, practitioner of woo, preying on the medically-desperate for their money, has smooth sailing and blue skies in North Carolina from now on thanks to the North Carolina Medical Board.
Meanwhile, unless something changes very soon, Mary Johnson, practicing conventional Pediatric medicine, practicing it with some small expertise in a "rural" hospital that obviously needed it, and going above and beyond on night twelve years ago in order to help a mere "nobody's" (i.e. not Ed Cone or John Robinson's) medically-desperate child . . . Mary Johnson, having already been through HELL (that "toll" Edward conceded earlier), is clearly going to have to cozy up to some of those lawyers she hates and sue the crap out of this Medical Board/state- just to get it to protect the duties it requires.
One of those duties ironically being to report quacks (again, my humble opinon) like Rashid Battar.
But BEFORE even trying to concentrate on that, the doctor has to face down a blogger-turned-cyber-stalker who has done everything he possibly could to humiliate, embarass, and libel her . . . because HE got angry (when the doctor, a "friend", challenged him by essentially asking, "Hey, how does what you are doing right now reflect on "the wife" and her business?) . . . because HE did something really stupid/illegal one night last November . . . . and because she's not playing the role he had previously assigned to local journalist & "BlogFather", Ed Cone.
Refering back to NC Senate Bill 958, having lived in fear for my entire blogging "career" of what a vindictive anon can actually REALLY do to a doctor in this state - particularly one blogging under her own name, what Jeff Martin did last November is NOT okay. It's NOT funny. It's NOT blogging. It's NOT "satire". It's NOT even remotely about HIS "free speech".
And since "civility in the blogosphere" is so important to the blogfathers and blogmothers of this ether, Dr. Mary will see Mr. Martin and his lawyer in Court on May 3rd . . . the doctor once again having had to turn her world and call-schedule upside down in order to accomodate all the lawyers . . .
. . . some of the same lawyers who have refused to do the right thing over these past six years and turn over the jurisdiction in her criminal case against Randolph Hospital executives to the North Carolina Attorney General . . . where it should have gone long ago . . . to be properly investigated by those whose interests - political and otherwise - might not be so conflicted and beholding to the local mill-town powers-that-be.
Of course, even that could be ify.
As I see it, we got a couple of weeks before this all blows up in a lot of people's faces . . . particularly the local journalists and bloggers who have sneered and spit and treated me like dirt - in large part because, as an escapee from "Hillary's village", I do not drink their Koolaid.
And yes, I'm VERY scared (of course, that's what Jeff Martin wanted). I'd be a FOOL not to be. For the only lawyers "representing" me (and by extension, the free speech & personal/professional safety of "We the People") in that Courtroom will be those employed by the state who've done me nothing but dirty in the past. But I've been scared before and I don't run. Friends (who've watched me absorb all the hits - with not-a-whole-lot-of-help - mostly because people think it's amusing and/or I can take it) have expressed concern that Martin and his lawyer will want to put me/this blog "on trial" in order to deflect from the crime to which he's already publicly confessed.
But if that is the case, I cannot WAIT to walk into that Courtroom and get on the stand with the black and white EVIDENCE of THE CRIMES I've been blogging about since 2005 . . .
. . . back when I took Edward-Cone-of-the-Moses-Cone-Healthcare-System-Cones at his word and dived in.
There endeth the lesson.
Thanks, very much, for reading.
Back on break.
