WOMAN SUES DOCTOR: PATIENT WAS TAPED AT CLINIC FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

A Redding woman has sued a medical marijuana doctor alleging she
allowed a Record Searchlight reporter to surreptitiously interview and
videotape her during a consultation in which she sought a
recommendation for the drug.

The allegations are denied by both the newspaper, which wasn't sued,
and the doctor's attorney.

In a lawsuit filed late last month in Shasta County Superior Court,
Tawnya McKee alleges that on Sept. 11, 2009, she went in to Dr.
Crystal Speller's Natural Care for Wellness clinic in the Market
Street Promenade.

While she was there, a Record Searchlight reporter videotaped the then
32-year-old woman in a consultation with Speller that ended with
Speller giving her a recommendation for medical marijuana.

The suit, which doesn't name the Record Searchlight as a defendant,
alleges the conversation was recorded in a surreptitious manner, in
what amounted to eavesdropping.

"(McKee) didn't intend that her consultation with (Speller) be made
public," her Redding attorney, David Edwards, alleges in the suit.

As a result, McKee was denied a job, Edwards said.

He declined to say more, saying the complaint spoke for itself. He
also declined to say why the Record Searchlight wasn't sued.

The suit seeks at least $25,000 damages due to professional
negligence, violation of privacy, federal patient privacy and
California wiretapping laws.

David Benda, the Record Searchlight reporter who interviewed McKee and
videotaped the consultation, said he made it very clear that he was a
reporter working on a story.

He said he had asked McKee for permission to sit in on her 10-minute
consultation with Speller, a Glendale-based physician who holds
clinics in Redding, Chico, Santa Barbara, Palmdale and Northridge.

Benda embedded the video from the consultation in a story posted on
Redding.com about the proliferation of medical marijuana-related
businesses springing up in Redding. In it, McKee tells Spelling about
her medical history.

In an interview not included in the taping, McKee told Benda that she
has smoked marijuana medicinally for about 13 years and that she had
visited Speller to "become legal."

She told Benda she can't tolerate pain medications like Vicodin, so
marijuana helps her cope with the effects of endometriosis, a painful
condition in which the tissue that normally lines the uterus grows in
other areas of the body.

"I don't have to hide anymore," McKee said after she received the
doctor's recommendation.

Speller's Los Angeles attorney, Tracy Green, said that it was clear
during the consultation that Benda was a reporter and that McKee had
given him verbal permission to sit in on the consultation.

She said McKee is just looking for a cash payout.

"She (Spelling) heard Ms. McKee agree to be interviewed, and she
(McKee) was aware that a reporter and photographer were there," Green
said. "This wasn't someone accidentally overhearing a conversation;
this was explicit consent. This is as if Ms. McKee wants someone to be
her baby sitter."

Green said that though McKee gave verbal consent to be interviewed,
most of the patients who agree to have their information disclosed to
outsiders are first asked to sign a patient-privacy release form.

"I think it looks like maybe something had fallen through the cracks,"
Green said.