Doctor Loses Practice After Hand Injury : Jury OKs $816,500-Award to Compton Dentist

A Los Angeles court jury has awarded $816,500 to a Compton man who lost his dental practice after his hand was injured during an altercation with a bill collector seven years ago.

The jury deliberated eight days before finding Monday that Associates Financial Services Co., a large, Dallas-based firm, and its employee, Tom Reza, had acted negligently while attempting to pick up an overdue mortgage payment at dentist Theodore Shirley’s central Los Angeles office in 1982.

Jurors, however, assigned two-thirds of the blame for the incident to the defendants and one-third to Shirley. They also found the defendants not guilty of battery or intentional infliction of emotional distress, as was charged.

Shirley, now 43, testified that his right index finger was sprained when Reza shoved him against a wall in his office after he refused to speak to a mortgage company manager on the telephone. The sprain never healed properly, Shirley argued, and a permanent, involuntary twitch of the injured finger has made it impossible for him to work as a dentist.

“He wasn’t able to practice for a couple of months,” said Shirley’s lawyer, Eric Ferrer. “Then he went back and tried, but was never able to resume his practice because of the emotional and physical injuries. . . . The finger movements prevent him from holding things in his right hand.”

Left-Handed Dentist

Although Shirley is left-handed, he must be able to hold a mirror and dental equipment in his right hand, Ferrer said. A medical expert hired by Shirley testified that the twitching might be caused by a persistent irritation of a tendon in the finger, a spokesman for the defendants said.

But medical experts for the mortgage company said a finger injury could not possibly cause such a jerk of the finger. Damage to the brain or spinal cord would be necessary for that, said Fred Harding, spokesman for the law firm defending Associates Financial Services.

Precisely what happened at Shirley’s office was disputed during the four-week trial.

In addition to Shirley, two dental patients testified that they saw Reza push or hit the dentist, Harding said. One witness said Reza grabbed Shirley by the lapels and threw him into a wall, while the second said he saw Reza strike the dentist with his fist, Harding said.

But Reza testified that he never pushed or bumped Shirley. The jury, although rejecting a battery charge, perhaps “thought there was an unintentional brushing up of the two parties against each other . . . and that was negligence on behalf of Mr. Reza,” Harding said. “But Mr. Reza denies even that.”

Sent to Collect Check

Reza was acting only as a courier, not an enforcer, Harding insisted.

“He was sent there just to pick up the check,” he said. “The doctor’s loan wasn’t even through Mr. Reza’s office. Apparently a manager of an Orange County office called to see if the doctor had dropped off the check (in Los Angeles), and suggested that Mr. Reza go down and pick it up. The doctor might have been too busy to drop it off.”

Shirley, now a law student, was about three months behind on payments on a $45,000 second loan on his Compton home, Ferrer said.

Shirley’s attorneys asked for more than $10 million in damages, including a large punitive award. The jury awarded for actual economic damages and pain and suffering, Ferrer said. Of the $816,500, Shirley will keep $546,000 after paying medical and legal fees, Harding said.