Golden – A former Wheat Ridge lawyer has been sentenced to 10 years of probation and ordered to repay his clients more than $250,000 in insurance payments that he stole between 2003 and 2005.
David W. Doyle, 52, was sentenced Tuesday by Jefferson County District Judge Jane Tidball, who also ordered that he perform 100 hours of community service.
Doyle received four 10-year probations that will be served concurrently. He also will be subject to other terms imposed by the probation division, including substance-abuse treatment.
“This is a tragic consequence of addiction and an unusual case,” Tidball said. Doyle “is a victim of his own doctor, who prescribed the medication.”
Doyle’s doctor prescribed 12 times the recommended dosage of the painkiller OxyContin for back pain, said his attorney, Charles Morphew.
At that dosage, “there were changes in chemistry in the brain,” Morphew said. “He’s just not functioning well.”
Morphew added, “There was no question this is a tragedy.”
Doyle, who on Tuesday provided $139,100 toward repaying clients, said: “I significantly apologize to my clients. I’m to going to make sure they get their funds back. I am a poster child that is everything damaging about our profession.”
Dole was disbarred in July. His license to practice law was suspended in May 2005 after he was convicted for two controlled substances felony charges.
Prosecutor Tom Jackson said Doyle was forging prescriptions for drugs.
He also forged signatures of clients who were injured in motor-vehicle accidents or at work on checks to them from insurance companies, Jackson said.
Doyle, who was indicted in March on 11 counts of forgery and nine counts of theft, deposited the money in his own bank accounts. He also forged letters from insurance companies to his clients with false reasons for why they had not received money.
“But for the condition he is in for drug addiction, I’d be asking for a prison sentence,” Jackson said as Doyle silently shook in court. “It’s fairly obvious that he is being punished by his own body with his addiction to OxyContin.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@ denverpost.com.
