Dentist Tried to out YouTube Critic but Will Instead Pay Legal Fees

We all judge people, and some of us dislike people for something as simple as their job. A popular profession to be hated for being is a dentist, a profession sometimes accredited with just being there for you to inflict pain on your patients. Well in a legal case in Georgia, America a dentist has gone to court to try out a YouTuber who uploaded an investigation into the dentist that was aired by an Atlanta-area television station.

The original indictment was published in 2009 which stated, among other things, that Austin beat several patients. The assault charges, whose victims included children, was dropped as part of a plea deal after pleading guilty to six counts of Medicare fraud. The assault charges relate to when a patient would cry out or moan during a procedure (something we’ve all done when that sharp metal tool stabs into your gums), Gordan Trent Austin would tell the patient to stop making noise, only to reinforce the message if they didn’t obey with a quick strike from a dental instrument.

With the original video released in 2009, it was only back in 2015 that Austin filed a lawsuit in an attempt to sue the Youtuber for defamation, this lawsuit included a subpoena to google to identify the Youtubers identifier. Public Citizen didn’t like this though and filed a motion arguing that not only was there no case for defamation but that the statute of limitations had elapsed, so even if there was it was too late.

The hearing was scheduled to take place on Tuesday but a week before it went to court, Austin’s lawyers agreed to not only drop the case but pay $12,000 in attorneys’ fees to Public Citizen.

We’ve seen a lot of cases like this where someone seems to go to court on the off-chance that they could benefit, among them are a LARPing website being sued for “infringing patents” by importing products and the Onewheel creators who dropped their case against China-based rivals only weeks before it goes to court.