CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A Charlotte child who got 14 “baby root canals” and stainless steel crowns on the same day in 2003 has sued three dentists with Medicaid Dental Center, claiming dental malpractice.

The suit against the privately owned chain of dental clinics was filed a week after the clinics’ owners agreed to pay $10 million to resolve allegations that they made fraudulent claims to the N.C. Medicaid program for unnecessary dental work on poor children.

In the suit filed Friday in Mecklenburg County, N.C., Superior Court, Antavia Digsby, through her mother Angela, alleged the treatment by dentist Heather Berkheimer “fell below the accepted standards of dental care.”

Digsby also sued Letitia Ballance of Mooresville, N.C., and Michael Anthony DeRose of Pueblo, Colo., dentists and co-owners of Medicaid Dental Center, alleging its policy was to “perform as much treatment as possible in one appointment.”

Medicaid Dental Center, now called Smile Starters, has clinics in the towns of Charlotte, Raleigh and Winston-Salem in North Carolina.

Antavia was 5 on May 9, 2003, when her mother took her to the Charlotte clinic to have her teeth cleaned. Antavia, now 9, was insured by Medicaid, the state-federal health program for low-income and disabled residents.

On that day, the suit says, Berkheimer performed 14 pulpotomies, similar to root canals, and mounted 14 steel crowns on the child’s baby teeth.

Employees at the center restrained Antavia by tying her down on “a papoose board” and refused to allow her mother to be in the room, the suit says. Berkheimer documented that Antavia was “very uncooperative and could not follow directions,” the suit says.

Berkheimer, who lives in Southern Pines, N.C., could not be reached for comment.

Charlotte attorney James Wyatt, who represents Medicaid Dental Center and its owners, said the suit is “utterly without merit. All the dental work that was done was not only necessary but imperative.”

He said the child’s mother “consented to all of the work. The real question that needs to be asked is why a parent would bring a child in with her teeth in that condition.”

Wyatt said last week that his clients agreed to the $10 million settlement to avoid expensive litigation, but they did not admit to the government’s allegations.

In 2003, WCNC-TV, a television station that is now the Charlotte Observer’s news partner, revealed allegations that Medicaid Dental Center had performed unnecessary dental work on children.

In 2005, the N.C. Board of Dental Examiners disciplined nine dentists after an investigation of the clinics.

Ballance and DeRose were placed on probation for three years. Berkheimer and six other dentists who worked in the clinics received written reprimands that will remain permanently in their N.C. files and with the National Practitioner Data Bank.

The other dentists are: John Lyons, Jeffrey Zieziula and Erron Brady, all of Charlotte; Lori Petree and Christopher Ballinger of Winston-Salem; and Michelle Wilkerson of Raleigh.

According to board documents, at least eight children, some as young as 4 years old, had multiple teeth pulled and root canals performed during single appointments at MDC clinics. Some had as many as 16 and 17 pulpotomies and stainless steel crowns during the same visit.

Darren Dawson, a Greenville, N.C., lawyer who filed the Digsby suit, said he represents nine families of children treated at MDC clinics in Charlotte and Winston-Salem, and says he’ll file more suits claiming that excessive and unwarranted dental work was done.

Board investigators have made regular unannounced inspections at each of the MDC clinics since 2005, and authorities said they have been “substantially in compliance” with standards.