Knappster: Dental surgeon plans to fight back against smear campaign

By George Knapp

It's been a rough couple of months for Dr. Jay Selznick. Selznick is a board-certified oral-maxillofacial surgeon. Basically, he rebuilds faces. Accident victims, gunshot victims and others turn to Selznick when their faces--and their lives--have been demolished. (The young man whose face was pummeled by the 311 Boyz is one of Selznick's patients.)

In the 10 years he's been practicing here, Selznick has generated an exemplary record. He enjoys a solid reputation among his colleagues, has had no complaints filed with the medical board and has had no malpractice claims. Zero. This isn't surprising considering that Selznick graduated from one of the best dental schools in the country. But whatever reputation he enjoyed in years past has been trashed in just a few months.

Selznick's troubles began when a woman named Karyn Hopkins came to his Green Valley office. Hopkins complained about an impacted molar and wanted it removed. Selznick got her to sign a consent form, gave her something to knock her out and went to work. When Hopkins came to, she was told that four teeth, not one, had been removed. Hopkins subsequently filed a complaint with the medical board, hired attorney Benjamin Childs and told her tale of woe to a TV reporter. Her attorney eventually came to represent six other former patients who filed their own complaints about Dr. Selznick. The whole mess was repeated a couple of times on television. As a result, Dr. Selznick's practice has taken a serious hit, and his reputation will likely never be the same.

All this sounds pretty serious and reprehensible, until you hear the other side of the story. For example, what hasn't been made public is that Karyn Hopkins (who claims that her father was a dentist) had only 20 teeth in her mouth when she came to see Selznick. There are jack-o-lanterns that have more teeth than her. And most or all of the teeth she had left were also rotten. Hopkins told the doctor that she had diabetes and heart problems. He advised her that all her teeth should be pulled because rotten choppers can cause serious infections and even endanger a person's life. Selznick says Hopkins agreed to the extraction of the four worst offenders.

According to the doctor and his nurse, the first thing Hopkins asked when she regained consciousness was what kind of pain medication she would be getting. When the suggestion was made to give her Lortab, she insisted on Percocet. For medical professionals, this is something that sets off alarm bells. A patient that demands a specific type of pain pill is often engaged in drug shopping. Hopkins reportedly called back to Selznick's office the very next day to request another prescription. Six days later, she called for another refill, claiming her sister had stolen her pills at knifepoint. Eventually, Selznick and his staff told Hopkins she would be getting no more pain pills, to which the patient responded, "Oh yeah? We'll see." Cutting her off from pain medication was the beginning of Selznick's legal troubles and media scrutiny.

Hopkins sought out attorney Childs. Normally, you don't see many malpractice cases involving extracted teeth. That's because even a runaway jury isn't going to award much money for a tooth, so lawyers don't take such cases. It isn't worth their time, that is, unless they get creative, as Childs seems to have done. He got his client to file a complaint with state medical authorities, then went to the media. In addition to trotting Hopkins out for the TV cameras, Childs took the unusual step of taking out ads in the newspaper, seeking to find anyone else who had been a patient of Selznick's. Although the ad did not specify what Childs was looking for, the implication was pretty clear. The ads ran over and over for several months, causing even more damage to Selznick's practice. (Childs did find six other former patients and got them to file complaints. The complaints look like they were cranked out by cookie cutter. Three of the six are signed by the same notary. Two of them are too old to be litigated. And all of them are without merit, according to independent peer review.)

Dr. Selznick is battered and bruised, but he isn't finished. He hired fearsome lawyer Dominic Gentile and Gentile's associate, Michael Stein. They have complained to the Nevada Bar Association about Childs' tactics, and they have filed a blistering lawsuit that names Childs as the defendant. No one can talk about the lawsuit, but you can bet that some interesting questions will be asked once this gets to court. For example, it's likely that Hopkins' DEA records will be pulled to find out whether she has done any drug shopping in the past. If, hypothetically, it could be shown that she gets about 300 pain pills per month from various sources, a jury might be convinced that she hasn't been entirely honest about her motives. We will have to wait and see what comes out.

Benjamin Childs' professional life will also be under scrutiny. Selznick's lawyers, for example, may tell the court what Childs allegedly told them about the reason he was running the ads. The term "revenue stream" might receive prominent mention in the course of the proceedings.

Dr. Selznick is still fighting to restore his professional standing. He will appear soon enough before the medical board to defend himself. And he will slowly try to rebuild his practice after being pounded for many months. Soon enough, it will be his turn to do some pounding.

Names and faces

Is it true that Mayor Oscar Goodman has secretly assured fellow Democrats that he will not be runing for governor in 2006? Officially, Goodman has declined to close the gubernatorial door for good. Off the record, we hear, he has told the other candidates that he won't run. ... And what's this we hear about Oscar talking to some business leaders about helping to open the first all-gay Las Vegas hotel-casino? There's a rumble on the Strip that the owners of Krave nightclub have been chatting with the mayor about just such a project, which has the potential to be a smash success. ... Was that former secretary of the interior Manuel Lujan who was in town the other day to meet with the Sharpe family of Pahrump? The Sharpes are fighting to keep the Pahrump land that they homesteaded 60 years ago. The Bureau of Land Management recently found a 50-year-old paperwork snafu and says the Sharpes no longer own the land, even though they've been paying taxes on it for all these years. Maybe Secretary Lujan can help the family in dealing with an agency he once directed. ... Just when you think you've seen every type of action in our town, along comes sumo. The way I hear it, a major sumo wrestling tournament is in the planning stages with a target date of October. Forty-two of the biggest, baddest sumo wrestlers in the world will gather at Mandalay Bay in a tournament that will likely become a fixture on the sport's annual calendar. It's the first time in 20 years that a professional sumo tourney has been held in the U.S. I'd go see that. ... Local attorney Bob Massi is getting a ton of exposure on the Fox network for his coverage of the Michael Jackson trial. Massi thinks Jackson's defense attorney is astonishingly good, and that the prosecution is in deep trouble at this point. ... Is it true that Culinary Local 226 is opposing efforts by its own union organizers to join a union themselves? The story making the rounds is that organizers for Local 226 are themselves being organized by the Federation of Union Organizers. However, Local 226 is said to be opposed to it. This drips with irony. ... Alleged Mafia hitman Steve Caracappa worked as a chief investigator at Nevada's Women's Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas. He seems to have taken a disliking to inmate Sandy Shaw, who is serving time for the "Show-and-Tell" murder case back in the 1980s. Shaw supporters say Caracappa was single-handedly responsible for Shaw being denied parole because he finagled a series of picky little write-ups that put enough of a blemish on Shaw's record that she will spend at least three more years behind bars, even after being assured by state officials that she was parole-eligible..

Farewell, Mercury

It has been such a privilege to write for the Mercury for a big chunk of its existence and it's hard to believe the paper is going away. Content-wise, it's far and away the best alternative paper in Las Vegas, in my biased opinion, and it's been an honor to grace the pages with such talented writers and editors. Fun, too. Since Geoff and Andrew will be calling the shots at CityLife, a piece of the Merc will live on. Thanks to all the readers who checked out this space each week. I look forward to exploring new horizons under a different banner.