NC court repeals $2 million adultery verdict because doctor did not know he was on trial

North Carolina’s second highest court has thrown out a $2.3 million civil judgment handed down against a Mooresville physician accused in a lawsuit of having an affair with a married nurse.

The reason: Dr. Matthew Johnson never knew he was on trial.

In a ruling handed down this week, a three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals said Johnson’s due-process rights were violated because the notice for his 2019 civil trial and other legal notifications went to a Mooresville address where he no longer lived.

In fact, Johnson only learned of the trial when a reporter sought his reaction to being docked several million dollars by the jury.

“The facts before us do not indicate that (Johnson) was negligent or inattentive to his case,” Judge Fred Gore wrote in his ruling this week. “This is a case where (he) never received proper notice of trial.”

Johnson’s appellate attorney, Rebecca Watts of Charlotte, said the ruling upholds her client’s constitutional rights.

“In due process, it’s not all right that a judgment is handed down against someone who did not know there was a trial taking place,” she said. “Basically, it’s a do-over. A potential do-over.”

The unanimous opinion — which included the support of Appeals Court Judge John Arrowood of Charlotte — grants Johnson a new trial. It allows him for now to keep millions of dollars in his pocket. But it also means that the details of his disruptive workplace affair stand to receive another airing in court.

That a doctor’s private behavior remains a matter of public reckoning comes down to a peculiarity of law. North Carolina remains among only a handful of states that still allow lawsuits for criminal conversation — a legalistic fig leaf defining the act of sleeping with someone else’s husband or wife.

In Johnson’s case, the wife was Jana Sprinkle, a longtime surgical assistant at his Mooresville practice, with whom Johnson initiated a sexual relationship in 2014, the appeals court opinion says.

Over the next four years, documents allege, Johnson supplied Sprinkle with the stimulant Adderall, gave her a cell phone for their private communications, and regularly met her in motel rooms and at his Lake Norman home for sex.

The affair imploded when another employee with Johnson’s practice found a photo on the surgeon’s phone showing him and Sprinkle having sex, the opinion says. When the small-town inevitability occurred — the photo found its way to a cousin of Jana Sprinkle — she confessed to her husband, Gerald.

The couple agreed to reconcile. But Jana Sprinkle lost her job, and Gerald sought mental health treatment.

He also sued Johnson. The 2018 civil complaint accused the physician of alienation of affection and criminal conversation and of interfering with “a genuine love and affection” within the Sprinkles’ marriage.

From there, the court records of the case get a little complicated. As for determining what happened and why, Watts described it as a “black hole.”

According to the Court of Appeals, the two sides reported in early 2019 that they had reached a settlement, but an agreement was never signed.

Communications between the parties and Superior Court Judge Anna Mills Wagoner were further compromised that March when Johnson’s attorney asked to be dropped from the case, citing his client’s “lack of communication, contempt towards his legal advice, and failure to procure payment for legal fees.”

(On a side note, Johnson said in his appeal that he did not know his lawyer had left him until after the trial because the attorney mailed his departure notice to the wrong address, too. )

That June, Wagoner prepared for trial. According to the appeals court, the Rowan County judge issued a pre-trial order that only one side signed.

The trial took place on June 24-25, 2019. Only one side showed.

After only one side of the evidence was presented to the jury, the members awarded Gerald Sprinkle $1.5 million in punitive damages and $794,000 in a compensatory award.

After getting a copy of the court file and learning of the judgment against him, Johnson filed his own appeal, alleging that Wagoner exceeded her authority on a number of fronts.

The appeals court opinion, however, landed on Johnson’s due-process claim, finding that the doctor could not have gotten a fair trial when he was not provided with the date, time or location of the proceedings.

Gerald Sprinkle’s attorney, Lisa Costner of Winston-Salem, did not respond to an Observer email and phone call seeking comment.