THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 9, 1994 TAG: 9408090411
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
A dentist has filed a $10 million lawsuit against a woman who allegedly circulated a false document claiming he had AIDS and sometimes did not wear rubber gloves to protect his patients.
Dr. Gus Vlahos was devastated by a false claim that he had the deadly virus, his lawyer said Monday. The claim was circulated around Dublin on faked letterhead stationery from an area hospital, said attorney Robert A. Ziogas of Roanoke.
Vlahos on Friday sued Doris Sheppard of Dublin on two counts of libel and slander for allegedly making numerous copies of the flier and distributing them to people at work and spreading the allegation in conversation.
``It was even put on the wall of a ladies' restroom,'' said Ziogas, who filed the lawsuit in Pulaski County Court.
The flier said Vlahos had AIDS and that he sometimes ``resisted routine wearing of gloves.''
Filed along with the lawsuit was a doctor's affidavit certifying Vlahos has neither AIDS nor the virus that causes it.
Vlahos is seeking $5 million in compensatory and $5 million in punitive damages from Sheppard.
``These remarks are false, defamatory, slanderous and libelous and Sheppard knew them to be so or negligently failed to ascertain their truth or falsity,'' the lawsuit says.
A man who answered the telephone at the Sheppard's home said no one in the family would comment on the matter and referred questions to James Turk, a lawyer in Radford. But Turk said late Monday the woman had not yet retained him as her attorney and could not comment on the case.
The document was first circulated about July 26 and rebutted the next day by Gene B. Wright, chief executive officer of Montgomery Regional Hospital. Wright alerted Vlahos that the letter was inaccurate and prepared on fake hospital stationery.
``This letter was not written on official Montgomery Regional Hospital letterhead, but rather the Montgomery Regional Hospital logo appears to have been fraudulently affixed to the letter,'' he wrote on July 27.
Wright wrote that there was no record of Vlahos ever having been a patient at the hospital.
Hospital spokeswoman Judy Tynan said the letterhead appeared to have been an amateurish clip-and-paste collage using the hospital logo.
The unsigned flier contends that six unidentified people agreed ``to disregard the entreaty of our superiors at this hospital that we not release information about a patient we know to have been diagnosed as having AIDS.''
Neither Vlahos nor his lawyer offered reasons why someone might try to harm the dentist's reputation.
``I have not done anything to upset anyone,'' Vlahos said in an interview with The Southwest Times of Pulaski.
``I am staying here in Pulaski County. I will not let someone destroy my life.''
KEYWORDS: AIDS LAWSUIT
by CNB