Professor Sebastian Johnson is one of the world’s leading asthma experts.
But perhaps all that lung expertise has gone to his head—a tribunal just heard a case in which Johnson filed an invoice for a patient consultation. The meeting lasted 15 minutes, and the charge? Almost $10,000.
These 16 minutes included time he spent making tea.
He was hired privately. His client called Patient A in the tribunal, had taken part in a clinical trial, and was experiencing adverse effects.
His lawyers are now claiming that he paid a “grossly inflated” fee.
At the meeting, says the patient, he was made a cup of tea and told that “If he dripped the case it would be helpful,” and that “there would be no charge for the work that had been done so far.”
After the consultation, the patient decided that due to Johnston’s comments, he wouldn’t’ use him as an expert.
Professor Johnston disagreed with the claim that the meeting only lasted fifteen minutes. He claimed that it went for over two and a half hours, and the invoice he sent the patient said this as well.
But the patient clearly has more evidence. He found CCTV footage of himself arriving home, just 70 minutes after the appointment’s scheduled start time.
However, Johnston insists that the patient is making it up, or had the footage doctored. “I should charge for the further time spent as it is taking up a great deal of my time,” he said in an e-mail.
The patient is asking for the invoice to be withdrawn, and also for a donation to Help for Heroes, a charity that gives better facilities to injured British servicemen and women.
And yet, Johnston refuses, still persisting that the meeting took two and a half hours, while the patient claimed he was not even examined by the Professor.
The hearing will close soon, but let’s hope that the patient gets justice.
