Protopappas

A jury found Tony Protopappas, a licensed dentist and oral surgeon, guilty of the second degree murder of three of his patients. He appeals.

Protopappas opened his Costa Mesa dental clinic in 1974. By September of 1982, he employed a staff of five dentists, many dental assistants, and two office managers. He was the only dentist at the clinic licensed to administer general anesthesia and was solely responsible for injecting the initial doses of drugs used for general anesthesia patients. He personally standardized these initial doses or “setups” which were prepared daily by his assistants. The staff dentists were also given standardized instructions on how to maintain patients under anesthesia.

Kim Andreassen

At a frail 85 pounds, 24-year-old Kim Andreassen went to Protopappas’s clinic with her mother on September 21, 1982. Although she was not experiencing any pain or problems with her teeth, she decided to have an initial examination after Protopappas finished her mother’s evaluation. Andreassen told Protopappas she suffered from lupus (a multisystem disease inhibiting normal growth), total kidney failure requiring thrice weekly dialysis, high blood pressure, anemia,…