MANITOWOC (WTAQ) – A Manitowoc doctor is in a new kind of legal trouble as a medical malpractice civil lawsuit is filed against him.
Dr. Charles Szyman, already the target of state and federal investigators for overprescribing prescription drugs, is now being sued in Manitowoc County by nine people or their estates.
Szyman, along with Holy Family Memorial Hospital and others are named as defendants in the suit. None of them have formally replied and no court dates have been scheduled.
FOX 11 reports the civil lawsuit was filed last week by the estate of Mark Gagnon, the estate of Heidi Buretta, Justin and Jonathan Jagemann, Richard Debot and the estate of Monica Debot, Paul Eggert, the estate of Alan Eggert, and Nathaniel Silbersack.
The 35-page complaint lists several examples of alleged malpractice. One of them claims Buretta was receiving treatment for a non-surgical back problem.
“The level of narcotics being prescribed was far beyond any medically legitimate, recognized or reasonable prescription of these types of narcotics and resulted in Heidi Buretta becoming a narcotic pain pill addict which eventually caused her death,” it states.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory, exemplary and punitive damages.
Meantime, Szyman’s medical license has been suspended by the state. Those proceedings are on hold while federal law enforcement pursue criminal charges against Szyman. He faces 19 counts of allegedly, “knowingly and intentionally distributed and dispensed unlawfully, and attempted to distribute and dispense unlawfully, a controlled substance outside of his professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose.”
A status conference is scheduled for November 23.
