Karen Dorn Steele

The trial of a suspended police detective accused of threatening to harm his estranged wife begins Monday – with Detective Jay Mehring trying to put Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick’s disciplinary policies on trial. In court documents, Mehring’s attorney has accused Kirkpatrick of discouraging other officers from coming to Mehring’s defense by threatening to launch internal investigations against them.

Jonathan Lytle likely can get a fair trial in Spokane despite extensive news coverage of the alleged homicide by abuse of his 4-year-old daughter, a Spokane County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday. Judge Michael P. Price denied a change of venue request by Lytle’s court-appointed lawyers. The ruling is provisional and the trial could be moved if an impartial jury can’t be chosen for Lytle’s Oct. 13 trial, Price said in his oral ruling.

Spokane oral surgeon Dr. Patrick Collins, hit last week with a $14.8 million jury verdict for a series of botched jaw surgeries that left a young Spokane woman disabled, is being sued by the widow of a man who died last year following palate surgery. He also faces several new state investigations that could put his dentistry license at risk. The wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Patrick C. Collins, filed Aug. 27 by Jean Gellner on behalf of the estate of her late husband, Jon L. Gellner, in Spokane County Superior Court also names Collins’ son, Dr. Chad P. Collins, and their business, Collins Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery.

A Spokane jury ruled Tuesday that a dentist was negligent in performing a series of aggressive jaw surgeries in 2000 and 2001 – awarding Kimberly Kallestad a total of $14.8 million in economic and non-economic damages. A gasp went through the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Michael P. Price as he read the jury’s figure – $10 million – for non-economic damages, including pain, suffering, disfigurement, and “past and future loss of enjoyment of life.”

The lawyers who’ve dueled for six weeks in a malpractice trial brought by a disabled woman against a Spokane oral surgeon gave their closing arguments Thursday in a packed courtroom in Spokane County Superior Court. The families of Kimberly Kallestad and Dr. Patrick Collins listened intently to the last words the jury would hear before starting deliberations in the case.

Three women treated by Dr. Patrick Collins for jaw problems testified that the Spokane oral surgeon promised to be their “hero” or “savior” – and then turned on them when they reported post-operative pain. Their testimony Wednesday in the malpractice trial brought by former patient Kimberly Kallestad undercut Collins’ earlier testimony that he likely never claimed to be a “hero” to Kallestad and didn’t say her severe pain was “all in her head.”

A Spokane judge has ruled that three former patients of Dr. Patrick Collins will be allowed to testify this week about their negative experiences with the Spokane dentist. They are expected to say during the rebuttal phase of Kimberly Kallestad’s malpractice trial that the oral surgeon told them he’d be their “hero” and fix their jaws, but then called them “babies” or “drug-seekers” when they reported ongoing pain – and were told they were the only patients with bad results.

Spokane Mayor Mary Verner has quietly ended a controversial legal practice at City Hall of routinely countersuing people who file civil rights claims against the city. Verner’s directive to the city’s legal staff came earlier this year, Assistant City Attorney Pat Dalton said this week. At the time of the directive, Dalton was acting city attorney.

The question of whether more former patients of a Spokane oral surgeon should be allowed to testify in a malpractice trial about bad outcomes from jaw surgery erupted in Spokane Superior Court on Thursday. Mary Schultz, lawyer for plaintiff Kimberly Kallestad, 29, asked defense psychotherapist Dr. Paul J. Domitor how many patients other than Kallestad had been referred to him by defendant Dr. Patrick Collins for evaluation prior to total jaw replacement surgery – a controversial operation Collins proposed for Kallestad in 2001 after four other flawed operations on her jaw joints. Kallestad, who declined the artificial jaw, is disabled and reports unrelenting pain, her doctors say.

As her lawyers wrapped up their side of a malpractice case Tuesday against Spokane dentist Dr. Patrick Collins, 29-year-old Kimberly Kallestad testified that Collins assured her he’d never had a bad outcome – and that she was the only patient who’d complained of severe pain after a series of major jaw surgeries. “He said he was very pleased with the result, but I was in unbearable pain. He said all his other patients did great and they didn’t really know what had happened to me,” Kallestad said.

The Spokane County Bar Association’s evaluation of Superior Court candidates gives the highest ratings to trial lawyer Mark Vovos in the race to replace retiring Spokane County Superior Court Judge Robert Austin and to the incumbent, Linda Tompkins, in the other contested race. On a scale of 1 to 4 – ranging from “not qualified” to “highly qualified” – Vovos got the highest marks for legal ability, integrity, legal experience and suitability. Another competitor in the three-way Department 1 race, county District Court Judge Annette S. Plese,tied Vovos for judicial temperament but was ranked lower in the other categories.

The commission that oversees Washington’s 5,800 dentists says it wants every dental death investigated, but it has stopped short of approving a formal process that would immediately identify the involved dentist and require an expert witness to examine the case. The Dental Quality Assurance Commission, meeting Friday in Spokane, was considering changes in its practices after The Spokesman-Review and Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week reported on the commission’s decision not to investigate three recent patient deaths, including the 2007 death of Spokane Gypsy leader James “Jimmy” Marks.

Adriana Lytle, the 33-year-old stepmother accused in the torture death of 4-year-old Summer Phelps, pleaded guilty Monday morning to a charge of homicide by abuse. Summer’s biological mother, Elizabeth Phelps, sat crying in the courtroom as Lytle stood and spoke her guilty plea.

Spokane County has three contested judicial races this year – two in Superior Court and one at the Washington Court of Appeals. The most competitive race will decide who’ll be next to wear a black robe in the courtroom being vacated by longtime Spokane County Superior Court Judge Robert D. Austin, who’ll retire in December.

The head of the Washington state Department of Health, responding to newspaper reports this week, is calling for all patient deaths linked to dental surgery to be investigated. Mary C. Selecky’s letter to the head of the Dental Quality Assurance Commission came after recent investigations by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Spokesman-Review into the commission’s decision not to investigate three recent patient deaths.

When the widow of Spokane Gypsy leader James Marks sued a local dentist in March, claiming that a too-strong dose of anesthesia led to her husband’s death, other dentists reacted angrily, saying a good dentist was being unfairly singled out. Indeed, Jane Marks’ lawsuit against oral surgeon Dr. Mark C. Paxton isn’t the only allegation that dental surgery caused a death, a review of state records shows.

A man driving a Jeep who hit a 14-year-old boy and left him to die at the side of a dark road last November pleaded guilty Thursday and was sentenced to 41 months in prison for failing to remain at the scene of the fatal accident. Prosecutors tried to build a vehicular homicide case against 26-year-old Miles L. Horn in the death of Rick Gomez, but could not prove Horn had been drinking. He was arrested on Dec. 19, 2007 – three weeks after the Nov. 24 accident – when Spokane County sheriff's deputies received an anonymous tip about the location of his girlfriend's Jeep Cherokee in a garage in Spokane Valley.