Dr. Richard Johns of Practice Management Services Inc. of Little Rock.
According to the Little Rock Police Department and various court filings, Dr. Richard Johns, a Little Rock internist, has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least two women and maybe three during the past five years. Johns is now the subject of a renewed investigation by the Little Rock Police Department.
Johns, through Little Rock attorney Wayne Young, declined a request for an interview. He has not been charged with any crime and he has never been disciplined by the Arkansas State Medical Board.
In a circuitous way, the dropping of criminal charges against the former office manager at Johns’ practice – Practice Management Services Inc., known as the Physicians Group in the Doctor’s Building on South University Avenue – has reopened the legal path for the earliest of the complaints, a long-simmering sexual discrimination claim that set a new legal precedent.
In that case, originally filed in federal court in Little Rock in 2009, a registered nurse named Rhonda Calaway alleges that Johns filed a false claim against her – that she wrote prescriptions for herself under Johns’ name – with the Arkansas State Board of Nursing after she complained of repeated inappropriate comments during the six months she worked for him in 2007. Calaway was Johns’ patient before and after going to work for him.
The Arkansas Supreme Court definitively determined in December 2010 that Johns could be sued personally for the type of retaliation that Calaway alleged. (See related story.)
Calaway’s lawyer, Little Rock attorney Denise Reid Hoggard, voluntarily dismissed the case in federal court in July 2011, in part because a material witness had been charged with embezzling from the doctors group.
That witness is former office manager Lynn Espejo of Sherwood, who was indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2011 on 59 counts of wire fraud – charges that were quietly dismissed in May of this year. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has declined to explain why the case was dismissed, but Practice Management Services Inc. has also dismissed a parallel civil case against Espejo, who insists she is innocent of any theft and called the whole experience “a nightmare.”
Last month Hoggard refiled Calaway’s civil suit against Johns and PMSI, this time in Pulaski County Circuit Court. In his response to the current civil case, as in the previous case filed in federal court, Johns denies all allegations of improper behavior.
In July 2010, a patient had complained to the Arkansas State Medical Board of increasingly disturbing behavior by Johns that allegedly culminated with his kissing her breast.
Like most news organizations, Arkansas Business does not identify the victims of alleged sexual assault, even those – like this patient – whose names are included in public documents.
In a written response to the patient’s complaints, Johns wrote, “There has been no sexual innuendo or persuasion.” He said he refused the patient refills of various drugs, including painkillers and Xanax, because she had been filling prescriptions but a urine test indicated that she hadn’t been taking them.
The Medical Board sent the patient a letter, dated Oct. 19, 2010, saying that it found “no evidence of a violation of the Arkansas Medical Practices Act” and took no disciplinary action. Unsatisfied, the same patient took her complaint to the LRPD, which took her statement on Oct. 29, 2010, and began investigating what the police report termed “sexual assault.”
The investigation was stalled for more than a year, according to the detective currently assigned to the case, J.C. White.
“At the time we only had one person and it was sort of a he-said-she-said,” White told Arkansas Business last month. “Since then there’s been some more stuff come out, so it’s back to being investigated.”
In July, White expected to turn his files over to the prosecuting attorney in a matter of weeks. But in August he said another possible victim had been identified, so the investigation was taking longer than he had anticipated.
White did not identify the most recent person to come forward, and most of the police files are closed to the public while the investigation continues. Therefore, Arkansas Business cannot determine whether the person White referenced is the same as a woman who, on condition of anonymity, said she too had been sexually assaulted by Johns while in his care.
The Calaway Case
Rhonda Calaway is now 52, living in Paragould and using her new husband’s last name, Rentfrow. After the complaint filed by Johns in 2007, she accepted a consent order by the Board of Nursing that cause her RN license to be on probation for a year.
But in her lawsuit and in a deposition, she denied having written any prescriptions without approval, describing instead a loosey-goosey office culture in which prescription-writing was often left to the nurse practitioner.
Attorney Denise Hoggard said Calaway agreed to the negotiated resolution of probation because “it was such a he-said-she-said, and all of the potential witnesses worked for Dr. Johns.”
She completed her probationary period, during which time she had to travel as far as California to find work, according to Hoggard. But Calaway “still absolutely denies having done anything wrong. She has never wavered in her position” that Johns authorized the prescriptions she filled. (Another nurse also served a similar probation after Johns accused her of inappropriate drug use.)
Calaway has persisted in her litigation because Johns has used the Board of Nursing to exact revenge, Hoggard said.
“This case went to the very core of her ability to make a living,” she said. “And if it was an act of retaliation, it’s an abuse of the licensing system.”
Calaway complained to the office manager, Espejo, about “offensive, sexually-themed comments” by Johns. Those comments, according to her deposition, included double entendres such as asking if she “knew how to screw” while Johns was using a screwdriver to install a magazine rack and asking her if she had tattoos on her “private parts.”
As described in the lawsuit and her deposition, the question about the tattoos was the last straw for Calaway. That evening – Sept. 4, 2007 – she asked to meet the next morning with Johns and the office manager, Lynn Espejo.
During that meeting, Johns fired Calaway. Calaway claims she then informed him that she would file a charge of harassment and retaliation with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Johns threatened to “find a reason to report her to the state Nursing Board,” according to her complaint.
Johns has denied making such a threat, but in his response he admits “that the Arkansas State Board of Nursing was notified of Plaintiff’s wrongdoing to which she consented to punishment.”
Calaway filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC in October 2007, after which Johns allegedly canceled all refills of Calaway’s prescription medicines. In the civil complaint, Hoggard states that this left her client “in serious risk of myriad medical injuries.” The response by Johns’ attorney, Wayne Young, says Calaway didn’t state a medical malpractice claim and that the statute of limitations has run even if she had.
The EEOC, according to Hoggard, did not find sufficient evidence of a violation to file its own complaint.
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