We went to small claims court today.
Funny. There was nothing small about it.
Besides being admonished by the judge right out of the gate for interrupting, I think it went well. I know my 185 page color tabbed binder was a bonus. I think Dr. Griffith was a little overwhelmed by it when the Bailiff showed it to her before he gave it to the Judge. Because I'm not a very good public speaker, it will help fill in some of the facts and blanks which I wasn't able to remember to say or convey.
Time was limited.
The awful Dr. Griffith was there. She showed up 8 minutes late, I might add.
And she got to go first.
And, unfortunately last. Which means some of her lies went without my ability to argue them. Things like she noticed during Dominic's physical examination (which never took place) that his language sounded hoarse. Is this lady nuts? I wanted to stand up in court and scream, "Hey Doc, he doesn't speak! How could you hear his hoarse voice in any language?"
She also continued to mispronounce his name, maybe intentionally, I'm not sure. But she kept calling him Dominique.
One of my favorite comments she made was when she told the Judge that I was anxious at the appointment and I cried a lot. Hmmmm. This Kook had just told me that my son had Dandy Walker, a serious brain malformation that could kill him....and apparently I was anxious and cried during the appointment. Ya think?
My other favorite comment that she kept on repeating was that she gave the Doodle "medical care" when in fact that couldn't have been further from the truth. She barely looked at him for 5 minutes during our entire consultation...he sat in the car with my mom for the remaining appointment. Where was the medical care exactly? She used that term pretty loosely.
Dr. Griffith is seriously delusional. She gave us the opposite of "medical care" and purposely tried to bilk money from me with her grand misdiagnosis and irresponsible prescription of too many anti-seizure drugs to a 2 year old.
How money grubbing is that and how desperate does this make a Doctor look? It's bad enough she is practicing medicine out of her living room at her house.
I didn't cry. Or throw up. I calmly and matter-of-factly made my case that she purposely alarmed me with the elaborate misdiagnosis during the end of my first hour so that I would be so upset, confused and shaken that she could continue the appointment to the tune of $1600. Then I explained how she never gave him an actual physical, yet proceeded to prescribe him two additional drugs; which in my opinion and other "real" doctor opinions could have been the trigger for the head drop seizures.
I made my point that the most outrageous thing of all was how she refused to come to the phone and discuss his adverse reaction to her new drugs without collecting a credit card number first so that she could charge me $400 per hour. She foolishly admitted that she did her best to get me to come back for an appointment so that she could "re-examine" the Doodle. Yeah. She wanted us to come back in the office alright so that she could charge me $500 per hour+++++
As I spoke, I kept thinking, this isn't a small claims matter, it ought to be a malpractice suit in Superior Court. I should have an attorney representing me and we should be asking for damages and pain and suffering. Dr. Griffith's narcissism is unbelievable and the ego on her is bigger than the both of us. With the unhappy former patients of hers, we could forge a class action suit against her for her gross negligence.
I'm very fortunate to have had the support of my mom and step dad. They went to court with me and coached me before and during on what to remember to say. It doesn't hurt that my step dad is a retired Assistant District Attorney in the county and court where we were today; and my mom is a retired District Attorney Investigator from there too.
But ugh. Glad it's over. We don't have a decision yet. The Judge was going to review the materials provided to her (yay. this means my binder.) and then mail us her decision.
So. My fingers are crossed and I am hoping for the best this time that justice will be served. I'll keep you posted.
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