Jury Awards Dental Patient $1.2 Million

In what a lawyer called the largest dental malpractice judgment in California history, a jury has awarded a Palmdale woman $1.2 million from a dentist she said removed all her teeth, when they simply needed cleaning.

Dr. Leoneed Gordon frightened her with a diagnosis that her teeth were so rotten they would fall out in a few months, complained Linda Jeffery.

Sporting full dentures, the 46-year-old school secretary said she was “very happy with the verdict” in the 14-day trial in Los Angeles Superior Court that ended Monday with a unanimous jury vote.

Jeffery said she is now looking into the possibility of dental implants.

Samuel Huestis, the North Hollywood attorney who represented Gordon, said neither he nor the dentist would comment on the verdict.

John Contos, the Westlake Village attorney who represented Jeffery, said Gordon is a Russian-trained dentist who has practiced in the area since 1985 and has offices in several locations between Sunland and Lancaster. According to records his office reviewed, the $1.2 million judgment is the largest dental malpractice award ever made in California, Contos said.

The jury agreed that Gordon recommended pulling Jeffery’s teeth because he would benefit financially, Contos said.

If he removed the teeth, Gordon would have to see Jeffery only about once every two years for realignment of the dentures but he would receive a monthly fee of about $25 from her insurance company just for having her listed as a patient, Contos said.

If Jeffery kept her teeth, she would most likely have needed regular cleanups and treatment that would have brought her to Gordon’s office every few months, Contos said, but the insurance company would not have paid the dentist any more money, even though he would have to work harder.

“He sold her a bill of goods because it was to his economic advantage,” he said.

Dental experts testified that Jeffery merely needed periodontal work--a deep cleaning that would have entailed scraping tartar from the roots and crowns of the teeth--but that the teeth were far from a condition that would have required their removal.

The case against the dentist goes back to 1990 when Jeffery went to Gordon’s Palmdale office for a routine checkup that was to include X-rays, Jeffery said.

“They hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, so I figured they needed cleaning,” she said, not remembering any particular problem with her teeth. “But that’s it.”

Instead, Gordon told her that her teeth were all loose, that they would not stay rooted and that she had two choices: to go through expensive surgery and physical pain to try to save the teeth or opt for a 30-minute, much simpler procedure that would get rid of them completely and replace them with dentures.

“I felt that was the only choice I had,” she said.

Six months after the teeth were pulled, Jeffery said she went to see another dentist because her original dentures didn’t fit.

She began litigation against Gordon after her second dentist requested the X-rays from her prior treatment and said her teeth did not have to be pulled.

“He said my teeth could have lasted a long time,” Jeffery said. “Maybe all my life.”