Mr Justice Henshaw has upheld a decision of the GDC’s Professional Conduct Committee, erasing Photay (the appellant) for misconduct in Photay, R (On the Application Of) v General Dental Council [2023] EWHC 661 (Admin) (24 March 2023.

The appellant was first registered as a dentist with the GDC on 6 May 2015. She was summoned to appear before the PCC at a hearing between 16 May and 25 May 2022, following an investigation into her treatment of various patients between 2017 and 2020.  The charges relate to, amongst others, clinical practice, note taking, dishonestly, record keeping practices and other allegations of misconduct.

The appellant sought to appeal the PCC’s findings of fact, its findings of misconduct and impairment, and the sanction of erasure which the PCC imposed.

The appellant argued that the GDC’s expert witness had “no particular expertise” to act as an expert witness.  Henshaw  J said however that:

“I do not consider that the PCC allowed the experts to usurp its functions; and, although it erred at one point in its characterisation of the expert evidence, I consider that the conclusions it reached about how the radiograph came to be damaged were based on its assessment of the evidence as a whole, were consistent with that evidence, and cannot be said to have been wrong.”

On the second ground, the appellant submitted that, on the evidence available to the PCC, the determination that the Appellant had a “strong motive to produce a post-operative radiograph showing that Patient LT’s LR5 had been successfully obturated” was wrong. In relation to this, Henshaw  J said:

“the PCC was in my view entitled to conclude, on the evidence as a whole, that the Applicant had a motive to alter the radiograph, and its finding cannot be said to have been wrong.”

The third ground, relating to the sanction, fell on the basis of the ruling relating to grounds 1 and 2. 

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