Two Florida dentists who filed a motion for a temporary injunction to shut down a Web site critical of them and the Florida Department of Healths review of their patients complaints have to pay the Web site's attorneys' fees, a South Florida court has ruled.
West Palm Beach dentist Richard Kaplan and Lantana dentist Leonard Tolley filed suit in November, 2004, in hopes of suppressing an Internet site created by former patient Elaine Prentice, a North Palm Beach resident.
Prentice had used the site to warn the public about the treatment she received from the dentists and about the manner in which the Florida Department of Health and its hired expert handled her complaint about the dentists.
Prentice was dissatisfied with the extensive dental work performed by Kaplan, Tolley and other dentists and with the way she felt she had been induced to undergo the procedures in question. She complained to the Department of Health and was told by an investigator to get some mental counseling and get on with [her] life.
In a brief filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, Public Citizen attorney Paul Levy, who is representing Prentice, argued that Florida law does not forbid citizens from complaining publicly about either their dentists or a state agencys failures and that Prentice had a First Amendment right to create the Web site -- www.dentalfraudinflorida.com to describe her travails.
The dentists dropped their lawsuit three days before the case was to be heard.
In an order issued Oct. 20, Palm Beach Circuit Judge Edward Fine awarded Prentice attorneys fees because the dentists and their lawyers from the firm McIntosh, Sawran, Peltz, &' Cartaya knew or should have known that their claim was not supported by material facts necessary to establish a claim.
Their case was an outrageous attempt at censorship and they knew it, Levy said. Only when citizens like Ms. Prentice have the courage to stand up for their rights can such efforts be defeated. She should not have to lose money defending herself.
