Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 4, 1995                   TAG: 9502060045
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

FIRED DOCTOR WINS SUIT AGAINST LEWIS-GALE

Paul Richards claimed in a trial this week in Roanoke Circuit Court that he was unjustly terminated from the clinic two weeks before he planned to quit, and that the clinic withheld his remaining vacation pay and profit-sharing benefits.

Lewis-Gale officials maintained that Richards had been making improper contacts with his patients before leaving the clinic, and that their actions were justified under an employment contract that forbade such contact.

Testimony showed that Richards met at Montgomery Regional Hospital, where he worked one day a week, with an official from Oncology and Hematology Associates, his new employer.

Richards, an oncologist, "was only interested in the welfare of his patients," said his lawyer, John Fishwick of Roanoke.

After learning of the contacts, Lewis-Gale terminated Richards in late 1992, shortly before he had planned on leaving.

David Paxton, a lawyer who represented Lewis-Gale, said the clinic felt that Richards was violating the contract by "trying to compete before he left."

But after hearing two days of evidence, the jury found that Richards was entitled to two weeks' vacation pay and his profit-sharing benefits in 1992, awarding him $30,211.04.