Patient sues dentist over gag order, gets Medical Justice to backtrack

A patient has filed a class-action lawsuit against his New York dentist over her attempts to use copyright law to gag his online reviews of her services. Robert Lee, who recently moved to Maryland, has asked a New York federal court to declare that his comments are protected under copyright's fair use doctrine, that the dentist's attempts to gag him breach dental ethics, and that the "privacy agreement" the patient was forced to sign is invalid and illegal under New York law.

We first covered this type of agreement back in May, after your correspondent was asked to sign a similar agreement by a Philadelphia dentist. The agreement is provided to doctors and dentists around the country by an organization called Medical Justice. They have reacted to the announcement by backpedaling furiously, telling Ars Technica that they will be "retiring" the agreement effective immediately.

A patient in pain
Lee told Ars that the controversy began last year, when he spent a weekend camping in Alabama. He developed a toothache so severe that he visited a local hospital. He was given painkillers, and when he returned home to New York on Monday he called Dr. Stacy Makhnevich's office to schedule an appointment. They couldn't see him until Thursday, and he says he had to take sleeping pills that week to allow him to sleep through the pain.

When he arrived for his appointment, he was required to sign a "Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy" before he could receive treatment. Lee says he understood the contract, but he was in intense pain, and "I couldn't think of any way a dentist would want to screw me over, so I went ahead and signed it."


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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/patient-sues-dentist-over-gag-order-causing-medical-justice-to-drop-it.ars

This is good.


"While we believe these agreements are honest, ethical, and legal, we are going to use this situation as an opportunity to retire these written agreements used since 2007," MJ CEO Jeffrey Segal told Ars on Wednesday. He claims that MJ will recommend to doctors that they stop using the agreements, and that patients will not be asked to sign any such agreements in the future.

Quote from the article.