Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Women Sue ‘Eye Guy’ Doctor Claiming Botched Plastic Surgeries

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. This new year, why not let Audible expand your life by listening? Audible CA contains over 890,000 total titles within its current library, including audiobooks, podcasts, and exclusive Audible Originals that'll inspire and motivate you. Tap into your well-being with advice and insight from leading professionals and experts on better health, relationships, career, finance, investing, and more. Maybe you want to kick a bad habit or start a good one. If you're looking to encourage

Starting point is 00:00:42 positive change in your life, one day and challenge at a time, look no further than Tabitha Brown's I Did a New Thing, 30 Days to Living Free. In the audiobook, Tab shares her own stories and those of others, alongside gentle guidance and encouragement to create these incredible changes for yourself and see what good can come from them. Trust me, listening on Audible can help you reach the goals you set for yourself. Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonderyca. That's audible.com slash wonderyca. A plastic surgeon sued by a handful of women claiming he botched their surgeries, leaving them with permanent scars. I outlined the claims against the self-proclaimed eye guy and what he's saying

Starting point is 00:01:30 about these lawsuits. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Imagine you've had something on your face that's bothered you for your entire life, and then you find a doctor who promises to fix it. But then it only gets worse. 29-year-old Kayla Cannon says that's exactly what happened to her when she met Dr. Harvey Chip Cole, who calls himself the eye guy. Kayla has a birth defect that left her with no muscles at the bottom of her eyelids. Now she says she's been left with permanent scarring and injuries following a botched plastic surgery procedure. Kayla Cannon is suing Dr. Cole, who's based in Georgia. I spoke with consumer reporter Justin Gray from WSB-TV in Atlanta about the lawsuits. He's been covering the case closely.

Starting point is 00:02:17 We first heard from a relative of one of the victims, and then we're put in touch with the victim. And obviously, it's a really tough thing to talk about, particularly on television. You're disfigured. You were disfigured from plastic surgery. It's not something a lot of people want to talk about. The person we did sit down with, it was so sad because she has had a birth defect since she was nine years old. She went in there to get that birth defect dealt with. She had no muscles below her eyelids. So she's had in and out of surgeries her whole life, all throughout her childhood. She says Dr. Cole was the first doctor who told her,

Starting point is 00:02:57 I can fix it. I will fix it. We're going to have a permanent solution. And then this happened. Now, Dr. Cole talks about his work on Instagram page and how he helps his patients. And I want to give you some tips on somebody that unfortunately had surgery beforehand with someone else. And I had to do some rescue surgery on her. This isn't the first malpractice case against the eye guy. In 2010, a 1.256 million judgment against him led to a landmark case in Georgia that overturned limits on jury awards. Yeah, we checked with the Georgia Medical Board. He still has an active license. In fact, if you go to his medical board site, there's no indication of any medical malpractice judgments. That's because those are self-reported.

Starting point is 00:03:43 So if a doctor doesn't want to report them to the medical board, they don't. So as far as the Georgia Medical Board is currently concerned, he has an active license. Kayla's lawsuit is just one of four others, all of which allege permanent damage after the promise of a permanent fix. The attorney representing those clients, Alex C., is going to join me here in just a bit. According to Kayla's lawsuit, she suffered permanent injuries, including but not limited to deformity, scarring, and eyesight impairment as a direct and proximate result of the treatment of procedures by Dr. Cole. On top of the physical injuries, Kayla Cannon's lawsuit says she has experienced mental pain and suffering, as well as financial loss with the medical expenses and lost wages during her recovery. Kayla Cannon is also suing Northside Hospital, saying the hospital should have known Dr. Cole wasn't qualified to perform the surgeries. Obviously, this is just the beginning of this story. We have these initial lawsuits. We expect

Starting point is 00:04:39 more. We want to follow up what happens with the lawsuits, but also the medical board. There are a lot of questions there. Over the years, we've heard a lot of questions about these medical boards in Georgia and in other states that how transparent are they about the investigations they do? How effective are they at regulating these healthcare providers? So I think there's a lot of questions there, both in the court with the lawsuits, but in the licensing and protecting of consumers with medical professionals. The attorney representing Dr. Cole, Scott Bailey, told me by phone, Dr. Cole takes these cases very seriously, and he disagrees with many of the characterizations that have been portrayed in the media. He believes that he practiced well within the

Starting point is 00:05:22 standards of care for oculoplastic surgeons and looks forward to defending himself through the litigation process. I want to tell you about Upside. It's a free app that gets you cash back on things like gas, groceries, and restaurants. This is real cash back, money that appears in your Upside app that you can transfer straight into your bank account. I used Upside when I went to Dunkin' Donuts for a cup of tea. I claimed an offer for Dunkin' on the app, paid as usual using a card, and followed the steps and got cash back.

Starting point is 00:05:50 It's so easy. You can also use Upside at places like Shell, Exxon, 7-Eleven, Taco Bell, and that's just to name a few. To find out how much you could earn, click the link in the description to download Upside or scan the QR code on your screen and use our promo code, CrimeFix, to get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas that's

Starting point is 00:06:10 promo code crime fix for extra cash back Alex C represents four clients who are suing Dr Cole Alex tell me first of all how your clients are all doing since filing these lawsuits? You know, I think they geared up for what litigation is and the fight that it would be putting some of their most personal, some of the most personal aspects of their life into the public domain. What I don't think that I could have prepared them for, or they could have prepared themselves for has been, you know, there's been a lot of support. Um, but there's also been just a lot of nasty backlash. Um, you know, I think there's just some people out there who can't keep their negative comments to themselves, whether they're founded or not. Um, and that's been difficult. Um, and unfortunately, I guess what we call them colloquially the internet trolls

Starting point is 00:07:05 dr cole's turned into one of those um he's been sending emails to people saying that my clients photographs that have been in the news and that have come up in the litigation are fake um so that's been difficult to deal with but all in all i think think they are all very courageous, obviously, for coming forward and doing this and are just hopeful that the net outcome here will be a positive effect and positive change for patient safety and accountability. You have four clients and these are all clients who you know you allege went to dr cole trusting that he would fix their appearance and especially for women you know your face how you present yourself it's a big deal it matters and i know one of your clients in particular had been vocal about this kayla cannon and she had a birth defect and she said she went to him to fix that and then got cheek implants. I think they became infected. So talk to me a little bit about her case specifically.

Starting point is 00:08:12 It's my understanding she's tried to get that fixed by other doctors, but that hasn't worked. That's right. Kayla was born with a birth defect where essentially she didn't have the muscles underneath her eyes that keep urinized eyelids where they should be. When we open and close our eyes and that keep them intact. So she, from an early age, had had some surgeries to deal with that. She ended up with Dr. Cole after being treated by one of his former partners and was promised even better results that, you know, he could, he could make all of this go away and it would all be perfect. And she went in and had those surgeries. Unfortunately, he removed just an astonishingly amount of her, the skin on her eyelids, preventing her eyes from closing, in fact.

Starting point is 00:09:10 And she's had, I think it's now seven, I believe the eighth one might be scheduled, surgeries after the fact to try to fix what he did through the four surgeries he performed on her. And one of the most just shocking things to me, or I guess maybe not shocking, but what really highlights just what horrible damage Dr. Cole did to Kayla is a lot of these surgeries have been removing skin from her earlobe to slowly piece by piece restructure her eyelids. That sounds very painful. I can't even imagine. Talk to me about your other clients too. You have three other clients that you're representing and a lot of them don't even want their names out there. They don't want their faces out there at least. Talk to me about the issues that they claim they had after their

Starting point is 00:09:56 surgeries. Right. And actually it started out as four. There are four filed cases. We now have more than 27. I think it might be 28 as of this morning that we're investigating. Well, since we're investigating all those others, I'll stick with the four that are filed that sort of started this and really brought attention to what Dr. Cole's been doing to his patients, what Northside Hospital's been allowing him to do to people. And the other cases, their injuries are similar to Kayla's. They went in and he promised to make them better. And all he did was make things worse, remove too much skin from the eyelids, damaged facial nerves to the point where one of our clients, her photo was actually in the media, but she does not want her name used. There are nerves damaged, so she can't feel her lips anymore. And she's had to have surgeries to try to tack her bottom lip back up because she can't control it.

Starting point is 00:10:59 So when she was eating, food was falling down her face. When she speaks, she can't help but drool on herself. And she has to speak very slow and deliberately to really concentrate and think about closing her lips and moving them to enunciate. Things that we all take for granted and things that should have never happened with the procedure she was having done by Dr. Cole. We have some other clients who had implants put in. They got infected, not unlike Kayla's. And instead of removing them and cleaning out the infection, Dr. Cole would leave them in and prescribe just course after course of oral antibiotics when it was doing nothing. We have another client who had an infection start to, I want to say it was on this side of her face,

Starting point is 00:11:57 start to grow in one of her cheeks to where it was protruding out of her cheek. And she went back and was like, there's this bubble on my face. What is this? He's like, oh, no big deal. Here's a needle. Just go home and pop it yourself every time it pops back up and just pop it and make it go away she ended up with an infection that got into the bone and the tissue of her face and left a permanent deformity because he decided not to address the infection the way he should have so we've got surgical errors removing too much skin damaging nerves we've got post-surgical errors and failing to follow up and treat infections appropriately. And I would say all in all, that's really the pattern we've seen develop with the clients we've called in.

Starting point is 00:12:36 Wow. And he calls himself the eye guy. I mean, he says that on his website. So he claims that that is his specialty. So what would your clients like to see happen? What is their end game with these lawsuits? They want him to lose his license. Kayla came out and said that straight up on one of the last interviews she did. And they want him to stop hurting people. They want to see accountability and responsibility, not just from him, but also from Northside. Because being a major hospital system like Northside Hospital, these patients trusted that doctors who were operating on people at this massive institution were credentialed, right? That someone had looked into their background,

Starting point is 00:13:25 someone was monitoring their skill sets and that what they were doing, they were capable and skilled to do. So, you know, first and foremost, I think all of them would say, we want him to lose his license. We want him to stop hurting people, but we also want accountability for what he's done.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Well, we will continue to follow the case and see where it goes. Alex C, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having us. I really appreciate it. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me.

Starting point is 00:13:55 I'll see you back here next time.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Women Sue ‘Eye Guy’ Doctor Claiming Botched Plastic Surgeries

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.

Your Ad Here

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Women Sue ‘Eye Guy’ Doctor Claiming Botched Plastic Surgeries

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.