Today's Edition
Bordeaux (AFP)
French prosecutors are investigating the death of a patient in her sixties after an operation last year by a British dentist barred from practising in his home country for more than 20 years.
The man, also in his sixties, has been charged with involuntary homicide and failure to assist a person in danger and placed under judicial surveillance.
He cannot leave France or practise dentistry in the meantime.
Archived BBC and Guardian articles from the time of the British dentist's removal show that he was punished for a series of professional failings and embezzlement, including charging patients hefty sums for "unnecessary" operations.
Florence Taillade, 68, the pensioner living in Guadeloupe who died after going in for dental work last summer, had been unable to find treatment in the French Caribbean territory for implants that were causing her pain.
A friend put her in touch with a dentist in mainland France, who in turn said she "knew someone" who could help, her son Guillaume Bonvoisin, 48, told AFP.
That dentist, a woman based near Arcachon on France's southwestern coast, has herself been charged with failing to help a person in danger.
-'Big-shot' -The promised help came in the shape of a British dentist colleague with practices in Paris and Bordeaux, the plaintiffs' lawyer Philippe Courtois said.
He said he could remove six of Taillade's teeth and replace them with implants for 20,000 euros ($22,000 at today's rates).
But "the next day she got the quote and it had gone up to 35,000 euros," her son Bonvoisin said, showing a document with the figure.
Taillade nevertheless agreed to go ahead.
She believed that "a big-shot" was "doing her a favour" Guillaume Bonvoisin and his sister Marjorie, 44, recalled.
The dentist's French lawyer, Rudyard Bessis, told AFP that there was no "self-interested excess" on the part of his client.
Hours after leaving his mother at the dental practice on July 3, 2023, Guillaume Bonvoisin was told by police she was suffering "heart problems" and that he should come immediately.
Emergency responders were not called until "15 minutes after the first signs of cardiac arrest," lawyer Courtois said.
The dentist's lawyer, Bessis, denied it had taken so long in remarks to the regional daily Sud-Ouest.
Taillade was brought in a state of cardiac arrest to a hospital in Bordeaux, where she died the following day.
Her children say doctors there at first suspected she may have been allergic to the anaesthetic used by the dentists.
But when later test results showed a possible "toxic reaction", the family turned to an association that helps victims of suspected medical malpractice and demanded a closer investigation.
Some blood was still available for testing, as the family had consented for Taillade's organs to be donated.
Guillaume Bonvoisin said the sample was positive for "sizeable quantities" of Valium as well as Stilnox and Xanax, three tranquilisers.
Prosecutors did not immediately confirm whether this was accurate.
The dentist's lawyer Bessis said that his client had given only "one pill" to Taillade to "relax her".
"She was coming as an urgent case, she'd been stressed out for more than a month with excessive tooth pain. She was screaming from it," he added.
Cocktail
Taillade's children said she had agreed ahead of the operation to take Valium, although she usually only used homoeopathic remedies.
The dentist "promised my mum that she wouldn't feel anything; he must really have dosed her up," Marjorie Bonvoisin said.
Lawyer Bessis said his client did not administer a whole "cocktail" of medications.
He has appealed the charge against the dentist, as well as his placement under judicial surveillance and the bans on practising and on leaving France.
Bessis said that he wants access to Taillade's medical file to try and find out how she came to take all three medications.
He also regretted that his client's "past" and the fact he is struck off in Britain were being "placed front and centre" in the "tragedy" of Taillade's death.
The accused also is currently facing a proceeding before France's dental body.
Plaintiffs' lawyer Courtois said that "once you're struck off in one country, it's strange that you can practise somewhere else".
"When you're struck off in England, that has nothing to do with France," said Bessis, himself a struck-off former dentist.
