Dentist sues state agency over student loan forgiveness

AUBURN — A Lisbon dentist is suing a state agency, claiming it broke its promise to forgive her student loans if she performed dental care in an under-served area in Maine after getting her license.

Dr. Kristina Lake filed a complaint last week in Androscoggin County Superior Court with attorney Jason Dionne of Lewiston. The suit said she enrolled in 2004 in a four-year dental school program at the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine. To help finance her degree, she researched the Maine Dental Education Loan Program.

Under the terms of the program, she would be forgiven 25 percent of her original outstanding indebtedness for every year she were to perform dental care in a part of Maine that has few dentists.

Before she committed to the program, Lake said she spoke to a representative for the Finance Authority of Maine, which oversees the program. That person, she said, confirmed that the debt forgiveness program had no minimum work hour requirements, she says in her lawsuit.

Lake enrolled in the school, borrowing $20,000 per year from the state agency for four years, accruing $80,000 total in student loans. According to a contract signed by Lake and F.A.M.E., 25 percent of the original loan amount or the total outstanding debt , plus interest, would be forgiven for each year she were to "practice primary dental care in a dental care facility in an under-served area."

Lake wrote in her complaint that she finished dental school in 2008 and started practicing dental medicine in June 2008. The type of dental facility where she would have to work was spelled out in the contract. In May, F.A.M.E.'s attorney notified Lake that the agency wouldn't honor the contract because she wasn't a full-time employee at that facility, Lake wrote in her lawsuit. Neither the guiding state law nor F.A.M.E.'s regulations require that the person be a full-time employee.

Besides suing the agency for breach of contract, Lake claims the person who represented F.A.M.E. when she asked about minimum work hours negligently misrepresented the agency's program.

Bill Norbert, a spokesman for F.A.M.E., said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation.