Metropolitan
The Dallas Morning News
Wednesday July 2, 2003
Doctor, pharmacist are sued over deaths
S. Dallas practitioner, nearby druggist accused of causing overdoses
By Terri Langford and Holly Becka, Staff Writers
A South Dallas doctor targeted in an ongoing criminal investigation faces five lawsuits accusing him of negligently causing patients' overdose deaths.
The neighboring pharmacist, Cliff Griggs, is named in four of the suits, which allege that he and Dr. Daniel Maynard conspired to provide medically unnecessary and improper medications "in order to profit from their ongoing use" by patients.
Lawyers for families of five deceased patients of Dr. Maynard filed the suits late Monday evening, the deadline for filing under existing law that puts fewer limits on possible damages.
Neither Dr. Maynard, whose medical license was temporarily suspended last month, nor Mr. Griggs could be reached for comment Tuesday. Dr. Maynard's lawyer, Jim Rolfe, did not return a call Tuesday. In the past, he has said his client has done nothing wrong.
Dallas attorney Kay Van Wey filed four lawsuits in county court on behalf of the families of Maynard patients Cecil and Harold Armitage, Mildred Janis and Leonard Neal.
Ms. Janis and Mr. Neal do not appear to be among the 13 patients whose deaths were previously disclosed in court records by law enforcement and the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.
A search warrant affidavit describes Dr. Maynard, 57, as prescribing narcotics without a valid medical purpose and defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid systems by charging for medical services that were never performed.
District Attorney Bill Hill declined to say whether the doctor's treatment of Ms. Janis, who died in May 1996, and Mr. Neal, who died in September 1998, was part of the investigation.
Ms. Van Wey said she is unsure whether her clients have been contacted by law enforcement authorities but added that they were willing to cooperate.
Ms. Van Wey said she included the pharmacist in the lawsuits because Mr. Griggs had "ownership interest" in the Mancuso Pharmacy, which is next door to the Maynard clinic, and because the pharmacy filled most of Dr. Maynard's prescriptions.
"There's no way on God's green earth that he could…not know what was going on right underneath his nose," Ms. Van Wey said.
Dallas lawyer Linda Turley filed lawsuit in state district court on behalf of the father of Christopher Baty, another Maynard patient.
The 28 year-old Dallas man, who went to Dr. Maynard after an old back injury flared up, died in August 2002.
"The family is anxious to get to the bottom of this and find out why this happened," Ms. Turley said.
Ms. Van Wey said that although Ms. Janis died in 1996, her relatives had just "put two and two together" about Dr. Maynard's role in the woman's death after the June 10 raid on his clinic.
The lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Baty, who died in August 2002, says that "negligence, carelessness and unskillfullness were a proximate cause of Christopher Baty's injuries and death."
The suits allege that Mr. Neal and the two Armitage brothers died from mixed drug overdoses related to "numerous medically unnecessary or inappropriate" medications prescribed by Dr. Maynard. Most of their prescriptions were filled at the Mancuso Pharmacy, the lawsuits say.
Staff Writer Tanya Eiserer contributed to this report.
