Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994 TAG: 9404170045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
Then imagine it over and over and over again - 14 times. Imagine 225 hours in the chair.
"That's just one heck of a lot of dental work, too much," said juror Marion Barrows. "Most of us have been through it once or twice, maybe an hour here and there, but what this woman went through was horrendous."
Barrows and five other Palm Beach County jurors awarded aspiring actress Lynn Sellers $675,000 last week in a medical malpractice suit against Boca Raton dentist George Karr.
That works out to $3,000 per hour, $48,214 per root canal.
"I was cringing the whole time," juror Ben Crocco said after four days of testimony detailing Sellers' four-year ordeal to repair a mistake she says Karr made.
Sellers, 32, from Boca Raton, began seeing Karr in 1983. She wanted her discolored smile improved. Karr obliged by giving her teeth a white veneer.
In 1989, Karr advised Sellers that her white smile would last longer and need less maintenance if he gave her crowns, a procedure in which teeth are ground down and synthetic teeth are fitted over them.
Sellers told jurors that the phosphoric acid-based chemical Karr used to cement 14 crowns on her teeth destroyed the nerves, causing such pain that she was forced to have root canals in all 14 teeth during the next four years.
A root canal is a procedure in which a dentist drills into the center of the root of the tooth, extracts the nerve, then seals it back up.
"I felt like my mouth had been doused in gasoline and set on fire," she said.
Karr testified that Sellers' problems most likely were caused by any of the more than 12 dentists she has visited since she stopped seeing him.
"Yeah, we gave her a pretty hefty sum," juror Barrows said. "And believe me when I tell you, we were beaming all the way out of the courtroom."
by CNB