LawyersUSA

A Yellow Pages publisher could be liable for fraud where an advertisement it published misrepresented the credentials of a doctor who botched a plaintiff's liposuction, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled in affirming a $1.5 million jury award.

The plaintiff suffered injuries as a result of several liposuction procedures performed by a doctor who advertised in the Yellow Pages.

The doctor's advertisement was placed under the "plastic surgery" subheading of the directory, even though he was board certified as a dermatologist. The ad also indicated that the doctor was "board certified," without specifying the area of certification.

The plaintiff and her husband sued the publisher for fraud, alleging that it was liable for her injuries because she relied on the misleading ad in seeking the doctor's services.

At trial, the plaintiff introduced evidence showing that one of the Yellow Pages sales representatives had taken an active role in crafting the ad and ignored warnings that it could be misleading.

The publisher argued that the plaintiff could not establish that her injuries were a foreseeable result of its conduct.

But the court disagreed.

"When we apply [the] foreseeability principle in the present case, it is clear that [the] plaintiffs' damages reasonably might be expected to result from their reliance on [the publisher's] misrepresentation….

"An advertisement that misrepresents a medical provider's qualifications self-evidently creates a risk that a consumer who seeks treatment from the provider in reliance on that misrepresentation will suffer an adverse result that would not have occurred if the provider's qualifications had been as represented," the court said.

Oregon Supreme Court. Knepper v. Brown, No. S055155. Oct. 9, 2008. Lawyers USA No. 993-84. Click here for the full text of this opinion.