SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Rockie, is a 4-year-old Retriever/Mastiff mix. He has had a hard life — one filled with pain since year one. Pain you can see in his dark eyes.
According to a lawsuit filed by Rockie's dog mom, Stephanie Spears, it started when he jumped from her SUV to an uneven driveway.
Stephanie says Rockie “yelped and then started to limp” and “because he’s my baby," Stephanie took him to the doctor.
Now, years later, he still limps despite three surgeries and rehab that Stephanie says have run up a vet bill of $50,000.
“It’s expensive, it’s a lot” says Spears.
The first surgery was performed at Mohnacky Animal Hospital in Carlsbad by Dr. Zoran Djordjevich, or Dr. George as he likes to be called, at a cost of $5,000.
Stephanie says she never actually saw the surgeon, but she did see at the office entrance, prominently displayed, a reassuring “Wall of Fame” for Dr. George. His staff, she says, handled the patient and talked him up as an expert.
According to the lawsuit they said he was "board certified" orthopedic surgeon who specializes in hip dysplasia.
Spears is suing the doctor and the Mohnacky Animal Hospital where he works.
And that is just one issue; the lawsuit reads "Rockie was treated in a manner that left him severly injured and in pain and discomfort for the rest of his life."
Sarah Thompson, the attorney representing Spears, says the second issue is that Rockie was diagnosed with hip dysplasia, and surgery to repair it was immediately recommended, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit claims Spears' dog, at 10 and a half-months-old, was too old for dysplasia surgery. An actual board-certified orthopedic surgeon, who offered his second opinion and is on the witness list to testify in trial, was shocked.
Team 10 confirmed his opinion over the phone phone.
Spears says the second opinion claimed “the surgery should never be done on a dog older than six months. It’s not going to do anything for him.”
And in fact, Spears says her dog is not healing.
The second opinion revealed that Rockie "would now have to undergo multiple surgeries... and would require years of therapy and be on medication for the remainder of his natural life."
“Six weeks go by, and he still has this limp. And we had to force him to get up on both legs to go to the restroom,” Spears says.
Spears also says Dr. Djordjevich recommended more surgery, but the board-certified surgeon had a different diagnosis completely unrelated to Rockie’s hip. The X-rays showed the real problem, he told her, was in his knee.
Hip surgery was not necessary.
Team 10 spoke to three former employees at Mohnacky Animal Hospital, one on camera and one who didn’t want her face shown — both of whom are on the trial witness list — and one who wrote a sworn declaration about what she saw while working there.
All three employees echo what's in the lawsuit, which claims Mohnacky Veterinary Hospital "acted in a manner that was an extreme departure from the ordinary standard of care and conduct."
“The business model is production-based, so decisions often seem to be money-driven as opposed to what's best for the pet," Another former Mohnacky employee says. “Whatever financially is going to benefit Dr. George, the most is what’s done. So, if the pet doesn’t necessarily need a surgery, he’s still going to push that surgery.”
The former employee now works for another vet, and she says she nearly left the business altogether because of what she saw at Mohnacky.
She told us employees were told to tell customers “that he was either specialized or had a special interest in orthopedics and that he was board certified."
Additionally, she says customers “were pressured into going forward with surgeries."
The third worker, Molly, says “[Dr. Djordjevich] was just surgery happy. Just wanted the money…. We would have meetings and it was all about pushing hip surgeries."
The owner of the hospital, Craig Mohnacky, responded to Stephanie’s charges. He says his “core values are under attack" and "Stephanie Spears is attempting to extort money from me,” an accusation Stephanie denied to Team 10.
Craig Mohnacky is a vet himself, although he rarely practices anymore.
He says "The comments, the slanders, the falsities, the misrepresentations have put her in a victim cycle."
Mohnacky, sat with Team 10 for an hour, and I put to him the two main issues in Spears' lawsuit.
First, he denied he instructed his employees to misrepresent Dr. George’s credentials.
"There's no truth in any of the accusations that are made... As a matter of fact, we go out of our way to make sure that the representation is clear that we are not board certified as an orthopedic surgeon," Mohnacky says. "Matter of fact, our anesthetic release forms historically have had a disclaimer in it saying our doctors are not board certified, which is signed by any patient that comes in to undergo a procedure.”
However, when pressed, Dr. Mohnacky admitted that when the surgery on Rockie was performed, the document given to Spears did not carry that disclaimer.
“No, the paperwork did not say that," Mohnacky says.
Mohnacky agrees Dr. George is not board certified in orthopedics or any other specialty. He is a general veterinarian.
Actual board-certified surgeons we spoke with told Team 10 that certification is a rigorous study, and the exam takes more than eight extra years of education Dr. Djordjevich does not have, and that without certification, a standard veterinarian should not be performing this type of "complicated, delicate orthopedic surgeries."
Still, Dr. Mohnacky says he is confident his doctor is qualified to perform that specialized work.
Dr. Djordjevich was in the room while we interviewed his boss, but he was not allowed to speak until the boss left the room.
In that conversation, which was not on camera, Dr. Djordjevich repeatedly referred to himself as “certified," critically leaving out the word “board."
But according to actual board-certified surgeons we spoke to and the American College of Veterinarian Surgeons, it’s wrong to call yourself a specialist without certified schooling.
Next issue: The board-certified surgeon Rockie went to for a second opinion told Stephanie her dog was too old for the type of hip surgery Dr. Djordjevich performed.
The lawsuit claims Rockie’s surgery was performed when he was 10 and a half months old; the outer boundary for that surgery is 10 months.
"My reaction to that is that I... I can, I guide you to the literature, you can go on the internet and read it," Mohnacky responded. "This procedure is done in animals between 5 months, a year of age, 10 months is certainly more than an acceptable time to do a procedure like that.”
I had looked it up and confronted him with information from the American College of Veterinary Surgeons' website, which says that surgery is "an option for dogs less than 8 to 10 months old.” Rockie was 10 and a half months old.
Dr. Mohnacky says that’s a fine line, and close enough, and reiterated that the surgery was perfect, regardless of the second opinion.
Stephanie says the dispute will be handled in court. Both sides have been through depositions and settlement conferences.
Stephanie is hopeful she will win enough money to continue Rockie’s care and end her years of guilt, able to one day look into his eyes and not see pain.
“I felt like a failure that I allowed a dog to suffer," she says.
Part two of our story follows up on the difficulty of such a lawsuit, because of a special law in California and many other states that protect veterinarians against malpractice claims.
