Distributor facing claims from disgruntled doctors

Press, 26 September 1988, Page 6

Distributor facing claims from disgruntled doctors

PA Wellington A Christchurch company responsible for distribution of medical journals is facing claims from doctors for non delivery of subscription material. The company, Peryers Education Books, was last year threatened with legal action after failing to supply hospital boards with journals. A Wellington orthopaedic surgeon, Mr Brett Krause, fed up with lack of action from Peryers over missing subscriptions, wrote to the Medical Journal asking other doctors to contact him if they had problems with the distributor. In the last fortnight he

received half a dozen letters from doctors and a hospital board reporting that they had not had satisfactory answers from Peryers about journals. One doctor said he went to the police fraud squad, the Consumer Institute, the Medical Association and the small claims tribunal. When journals stopped arriving last year, he found his cheque to Peryers had been cashed but the publisher had not been paid. On Wednesday of last week in Christchurch he won the small claims case for a refund of $B3l. Peryers had not appeared to defend the

case. Mr Krause said he last received a copy of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery in September last year. The amount of money was not great but the inconvenience for specialists to be without journals needed to keep them up to date was. He said it was not just orthopaedic literature that was outstanding but also a wider range in medical subscription educational material. The owner of Peryers, a Christchurch stockbroker, Mr John Egden, said there were a number of complaints. Last year, eight hospital

boards and educational institutions had claimed refunds of $25,000 from Peryers for missing journals. Their complaints related to the period during which the company was run by Messrs Phillip Hyde-Harris and Keith Hunt. It was found that some subscriptions had not been paid to publishers. Mr Egden bought the company in September 1987. Mr Krause said he had gone directly to the English publisher for back issues of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and had now paid twice for the articles.