Davis
HARRISBURG, Pa. – CVS and Pyramid Healthcare now face a lawsuit over the alleged actions of a York doctor facing 92 criminal counts including rape, assault and sexual extortion.
Police arrested Christopher Jackson Davis, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, in April, marking his latest legal problem in a career that also features charges he used a deceased patient’s body as a ventriloquist dummy.
An Oct. 31 lawsuit in the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas contains even more serious allegations, like raping patients under threat of withholding medication. His patients are alcoholics and drug addicts whom he would invite out for drinks, the suit says.
“Be nice to me and I can take you up as high as you want to go,” he is alleged to have told one woman seeking methadone after an unnecessary breast examination.
Veronica Hubbard of Andreozzi + Foote in Harrisburg represents 15 plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Davis maintained a private practice in York and was also medical director at Pyramid Healthcare Treatment Center, where state Attorney General Dave Sunday said he “abused his role as a gatekeeper to necessary medications for vulnerable patients” between 2022 and 2024.
Pyramid is accused of either not knowing or ignoring Davis’ criminal past when it hired him. In 2000, he was asked to pronounce a patient at Manor Care in York dead but instead bent the body upright and moved its jaw while saying something to the effect of “Hi there, how are you?”
The following year, surveillance footage showed him breaking into a clinic he had resigned from to take Nubain, an opioid. He pleaded guilty to theft charges, and his medical license was suspended for two years.
“A reasonable check would have revealed his history of medical and criminal misconduct and made clear he was unfit to work in a healthcare setting or to be left alone with patients,” the suit says.
CVS faces liability for filling his allegedly excessive prescriptions that sometimes featured a potentially lethal combination of drugs.
The individual stories listed in the complaint allege:
-Davis prescribed Suboxone to an alcoholic who he also contacted through text and social media and invited out for drinks;
-Davis tried to kiss a patient, looked down her pants and requested nude photos through texts;
-Davis sexually abused a woman seeking methadone and threatened to discontinue her prescriptions if she rejected his sexual advances;
-Davis sexually abused a woman 10 times in Pyramid’s exam room after manipulating her medications and convincing her they were in a relationship;
-Davis sexually abused a woman who reported it and then contacted her on Facebook with an offer to buy her drugs;
-Davis coerced a woman into intercourse under threats of withholding her medication;
-Davis threatened to kill one woman after sexually abusing her 10-15 times;
-Davis posted a photo of a woman he had told to get naked during her first appointment on Facebook; and
-Davis offered a patient money and prescription drugs in exchange for sexual acts.
Among the charges are corporate and gross negligence, negligent hiring and supervision and assault and battery.
