A lawyer charged with disrupting an Ohio Dental Board meeting on
Wednesday says he is not guilty and has asked for a jury trial.
Douglas E. Graff is accused of disrupting a public meeting, a misdemeanor.
During the meeting, Graff, whose office is in Columbus, tried to speak on
behalf of his client, Parmeet S. Sohi, a dentist with Cincinnati Dental Care in
Cincinnati.
Graff refused to sit down when Donald Demkee of Wooster, Ohio, president of
the dental board, said he could not speak.
Witnesses said Graff was animated and dramatic as he kept talking, and
eventually, Demkee had a State Highway Patrol trooper take Graff out in
handcuffs.
"The whole time, a state police trooper was sitting there,'' said Paul
Lafayette, a lawyer for the Ohio Dental Association who was at the meeting.
Lafayette said that he and others who have been attending board meetings for
years have never seen a trooper in the meeting room before.
"My belief is (the board) was
expecting something to happen,''
Lafayette
said. |
The action comes on the heels of a state inspector general's report that
criticizes the dental board. The report showed two findings of an appearance of
impropriety and said the board lacked formalized investigative rules.
The board licenses and regulates dentists and hygienists in Ohio and
investigates complaints about dental care.
Graff, whose attorney represented him yesterday in Franklin County Municipal
Court, said later in an interview that he was trying to ensure his client
received due process.
Graff said he kept talking to raise objections and issues to use in the
appeal of his client's case.
The reason my attorney was arrested is not because he was trying to be
disruptive,'' Sohi said. The board "knew he would expose them and they wanted to
stop him before he uttered a word.''
Sohi has a long-running dispute with the board, which suspended his license
for six months in 1996
Sohi has a long-running dispute with the board, which suspended
his license
for six months in 1996
after three former employees alleged that he had put
children in |
headlocks and threatened them with needles if they did not
cooperate.
Sohi denied the charges and appealed the board's decision. An appeals court
ruled that the board violated Sohi's right to due process because it did not
allow him to face his accusers and bring in testimony of the parents or children
supposedly involved.
The court ordered the board to reconsider the case, based only on the
allegations involving the son of John Gibson of Blanchester, Ohio. Gibson was at
the dental board hearing Wednesday, ready to say that his son was never abused.
But Gibson was not allowed to speak at the hearing.
"The incident never happened,'' Gibson said in a telephone interview
yesterday. "My wife or I was with my son every time he was at the dentist.''
Dental board officials and representatives of the state attorney general's
office, which represents the board in legal matters, declined or were not
available to comment yesterday. |
