{"id":355348,"date":"2025-12-18T03:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T03:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355348\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T03:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T03:30:08","slug":"family-of-man-disfigured-by-metro-atlanta-dermatologist-awarded-56-8-million-wsb-tv-channel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/355348\/","title":{"rendered":"Family of man disfigured by metro Atlanta dermatologist awarded $56.8 million \u2013 WSB-TV Channel 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. \u2014 A jury awarded more than $50 million to the estate of Vietnam veteran Tony Waldrop after finding that a doctor disfigured him.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Waldrop was suffering from skin cancer on his right ear and was getting treated at the VA for years with no problems. But he needed an appointment quicker than the VA could provide.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe VA couldn\u2019t see him in time for this. He needed to be seen sooner than later, so he got a referral from the VA, and they sent him to Dr. Payne, who is also a vet,\u201d attorney Lloyd Bell told Channel 2\u2019s Tyisha Fernandes.<\/p>\n

The dermatologist did a procedure where he removed some tissue, but the cancer came back in the same spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it grew back, Dr. Payne cut it out, but then he throws the tissue away and doesn\u2019t send for biopsy. He thought it was a cyst,\u201d Bell said. \u201cWell, that\u2019s a bad idea if you deal with a high-risk cancer patient, because when he grew back again a month and a half, two months later, it had invaded deep into his face.\u201d<\/p>\n

TRENDING STORIES:<\/p>\n

It disfigured Waldrop and his family says he spent the next eight years suffering before he died.<\/p>\n

Last week, a Fulton County jury found that Dr. Payne was negligent in his medical treatment and awarded his estate $56.8 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it says that people need to check themselves and check their views of their infallibility, and, like I said, doctors are just like everybody else where they have to keep their guard up that they\u2019re not getting overly confident and that they are staying humble,\u201d Bell said.<\/p>\n

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\u00a92025 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FULTON COUNTY, Ga. \u2014 A jury awarded more than $50 million to the estate of Vietnam veteran Tony…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[76384,144605,8279,176324,2741,97,3729,26234,26442,176325,172506,172510,14879,3999,176326,33927],"class_list":["post-355348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-channel_2","tag-channel_two","tag-doctor","tag-fulton_county_courthouse","tag-george","tag-health","tag-local","tag-payne","tag-tony","tag-tony_waldrop","tag-tyisha","tag-tyisha_fernandez","tag-va","tag-vietnam","tag-waldrop","tag-wsbsyndication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}