Medical License

More than three years after his arrest on charges of sexually assaulting female patients, Bryn Mawr neurosurgeon Dr. Samuel S. Lyness has been stripped of his license to practice medicine. By a 5-1 vote here yesterday, the State Board of Medicine went beyond its own examiner's recommedation and ordered Lyness' license revoked. The action can be appealed to Commonwealth Court. Lyness' attorney could not be reached for comment. The decision represents the board's toughest possible action.

The state's revocation of Main Line neurosurgeon Samuel S. Lyness' medical license was thrown out yesterday by Commonwealth Court, which said that some of the doctor's accusers may have waited too long to file their sexual-assault complaints. In a 25-page opinion, the court vacated the March 1988 decision by the state Board of Medicine permanently revoking Lyness' license for "immoral and unprofessional conduct. " Writing for the court, Judge Bernard L. McGinley sent the case back to the medical board, saying the state had failed to determine "whether Lyness proved that the alleged victims unreasonably delayed in filing their complaints, and whether he was prejudiced by any such delay.

A former Gloucester County medical examiner who was convicted last year of witness-tampering and accused of mutilating a corpse surrendered his New Jersey medical license yesterday. During an administrative hearing before the state Board of Medical Examiners, Claus P. Speth surprised everyone by agreeing to a settlement offered by the board that allows for his credentials of 28 years to be reinstated if his guilty verdict is overturned. Otherwise, Speth's license will be revoked.

Even as a child, David Tremoglie pretended to practice medicine. At his cousin Bob's eighth birthday party, he arrived with a stethoscope dangling around his neck and demonstrated its use to other children. More recently, Tremoglie presented himself as a licensed psychiatrist to more than 500 patients he treated at a mental health center in Northeast Philadelphia. He wrote prescriptions, counseled patients about their most intimate problems, and occasionally arranged for them to be admitted to a local psychiatric hospital, according to a lawyer for some of the patients.

A former general practitioner at Wenonah Medical Associates was sentenced yesterday to four years probation for criminal sexual contact with three female patients last summer. As part of a plea agreement with the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office, Michael C. Lafon, 45, of Haddonfield, must forfeit his medical license, receive counseling, and stay away from his victims. During the hearing before Superior Court Judge Walter Marshall, Lafon's attorney, Charles Iannuzzi, argued that his client had no previous criminal history and would "respond favorably" to probation.

The chief deputy in the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office, Ian C. Hood, has held the post for more than two years without a Pennsylvania medical license, a requirement of his job. According to the Department of State in Harrisburg, Hood obtained a license to practice medicine in Pennsylvania from the state Board of Medicine on Nov. 15, 1989. According to records the license expired on Dec. 31, 1990, and was never renewed. According to state officials, Hood's license would have been renewed had he completed and submitted a renewal form and the required $80 fee. But when the state sent a notice to Hood at the California address he had listed on his application, it was returned undelivered with no forwarding address, said Denise Henke, a department spokeswoman.

A Paoli dentist, already facing the loss of his license, heard a former patient testify yesterday that she painfully regrets allowing him to remove 13 of her fillings based on his scary warnings about mercury poisoning. Jana Nestlerode, 53, of West Chester, said that after Dr. Anthony Roeder removed and replaced her amalgam fillings with composites, she endured months of pain and was unable to eat solid food. Since then, she has had one tooth extracted and four root canals. Nestlerode, who teaches criminal law at West Chester University, sued Roeder for malpractice in March 2000.

Two Philadelphia doctors who have testified that they signed numerous OxyContin and Xanax prescriptions to help Bensalem physician Richard G. Paolino were arrested yesterday on fraud and drug trafficking charges. Wesley Collier, 52, and David F. Harmon, 53, had said under oath in April that they were hired to cover Paolino's busy pain practice - signing prescription blanks that Paolino allegedly issued to patients for cash after he lost his medical license. Arrested separately by state and federal drug agents, they were brought back to the same district justice's courtroom where they testified at Paolino's preliminary hearing.

For many newspapers readers, the name Lyness is synonymous with allegations of sexual misconduct by a well-known neurosurgeon. But to the legal community, it represents case law that set new standards for the way government bodies in Pennsylvania conduct themselves. The case of Dr. Samuel S. Lyness, who was accused of sexually molesting six female patients while practicing at Bryn Mawr Hospital, ended Tuesday when the state Board of Medicine dismissed all charges against the doctor.

More charges have been filed against an instructor who allegedly fondled students' breasts while teaching them how to operate an electrocardiogram (EKG) machine, officials said today. John Ross, 58, was director of education at The Prism Institute, a for-profit Cherry Hill career training center. On Friday, the Camden County Prosecutor's office charged Ross with two counts of Fourth-Degree Unlawful Sexual Conduct, alleging he fondled the breasts of two female students while teaching them how to attach EKG sensors to their chests.

A Pennsauken doctor whose license was suspended in 2001 was indicted by a grand jury last week for illegally continuing to practice medicine, authorities said. Kevin Lickfield, 50, of Marlton, treated patients as a general practitioner at Lickfield Medical Associates in Pennsauken from fall 2009 to February 2010, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office and Pennsauken police said. He has a medical degree as a doctor of osteopathy. Lickfield was arrested in 2010 after a former employee reported him to authorities.

More charges have been filed against an instructor who allegedly fondled students' breasts while teaching them how to operate an electrocardiogram (EKG) machine, officials said today. John Ross, 58, was director of education at The Prism Institute, a for-profit Cherry Hill career training center. On Friday, the Camden County Prosecutor's office charged Ross with two counts of Fourth-Degree Unlawful Sexual Conduct, alleging he fondled the breasts of two female students while teaching them how to attach EKG sensors to their chests.

LOS ANGELES - A California doctor dubbed "Dr. Feelgood" by a prosecutor for allegedly doling out tens of thousands of prescriptions to patients who didn't need them was charged with murder yesterday in the overdose deaths of three otherwise healthy young men. Hsui-Ying "Lisa" Tseng was arrested after a lengthy probe that involved undercover work by drug-enforcement agents who posed as patients to obtain prescriptions. She's charged with overprescribing methadone, Xanax, oxycodone and other drugs.

DR. CONRAD MURRAY , the cardiologist who became Michael Jackson 's personal anesthesiologist and medical yes-man, was convicted yesterday of involuntary manslaughter after less than nine hours of jury deliberation, ending a trial that painted him as a careless caregiver who administered a lethal dose of propofol to the pop star. Members of Michael's family wept quietly after the verdict. Mother Katherine Jackson later told the Associated Press, "I feel better now. " Asked if she was confident in the outcome, she said, "Yes I was. " La Toya Jackson told the AP she was overjoyed.

STEVEN "Dr. Steve" Massof, a medical-school graduate who never obtained a license to practice medicine, yesterday became the fourth defendant in the city's abortion-horror case to plead guilty. Massof, 49, of Pittsburgh, pleaded guilty to a handful of crimes, the most serious being two counts of third-degree murder in the deaths of two babies that had been born viable and alive at the now-closed Women's Medical Society clinic in West Philadelphia. Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner, who accepted guilty pleas last month from three of the case's 10 defendants, accepted Massof's guilty plea and set a tentative sentencing date for next month.

A fourth defendant charged in the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell and workers at his former clinic is expected to plead guilty during a court hearing set for Thursday. Steven Massof, 49, of Pittsburgh, is to have a status hearing before Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner. Lerner accepted guilty pleas last month from three of the case's 10 defendants. Massof, of Pittsburgh, worked at the Women's Medical Society clinic in West Philadelphia from 2003 to 2008 and is charged with numerous crimes, including the murder of two viable babies born alive at the clinic.

LOS ANGELES - After just a few moments in Michael Jackson's bedroom, the paramedic dispatched to save the singer's life knew things weren't adding up. There was the skinny man in front of him, eyes open and a surgical cap on his head. His skin was turning blue. Paramedic Richard Senneff asked the sweating, frantic-looking doctor in the room what condition the stricken man had. "He said, 'Nothing. He has nothing,' " Senneff told jurors at the involuntary manslaughter trial of Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray.

A New Jersey allergist has had her license to practice suspended after stabbing a 13-year-old girl more than 100 times with a screwdriver, the New Jersey Attorney General's office said Monday. Dr. Sylvia S. Lee, of Emerson, hired the girl to do chores in her home, including washing clothes and diapers worn by her two dogs. Lee told police that on July 3, the girl was supposed to wash the clothes in a certain order, and did not. "Usually we wash the dirty doggy clothes first, then the not-so dirty doggy clothes next," Lee told police, according to court documents.