SEATTLE – A prominent Seattle-area pediatrician has been ordered to pay $625,000 to three former patients who say he used them for voyeuristic sexual gratification.
Ruling Wednesday on a lawsuit, a King County Superior Court jury decided 62-year-old Dr. Bill S. Schnall violated standards of care and negligently inflicted emotional distress.
Lawyers for the former patients were seeking as much as $24 million. They say Schnall touched them inappropriately when they were boys, sent sexually suggestive e-mails and causing them to masturbate in front of him.
Schnall was once president of the medical staff at Children's Hospital and was on the Shoreline School Board. He gave up his medical license after it was suspended by a state panel which accused him of misconduct in August 2005.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox