Newport Beach doctor pleads guilty in assault

Deepa Bharath

NEWPORT BEACH -- A physician who runs her own private practice in the

city and has been featured in the “Best Doctors in America” has pleaded

guilty to assaulting a Costa Mesa man with a handgun and dousing him with

pepper spray when he tried to serve her child-custody papers, officials

said.

Newport Beach police arrested Carol Ann Jackson, 49, on Aug. 25, 2000,

in the 1500 block of Galaxy Drive after the incident, according to police

reports.

The district attorney in October 2000 charged Jackson with using tear

gas or a tear-gas weapon and brandishing a firearm. A third charge was

also filed stating that Jackson assaulted a licensed process server.

Jackson entered a guilty plea on all charges Oct. 11. She declined comment Monday.

All charges were misdemeanors, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Nancy du Pont,

who prosecuted the case.

The first charge relating to the tear gas could have been treated as a

misdemeanor or a felony, but the district attorney’s office decided to go

with the misdemeanor charge because Jackson had suffered spousal abuse

from her ex-husband, Matthew Jackson, she said.

“The process server was actually serving child custody papers from her

ex-husband’s law firm,” du Pont explained. “So she was upset at the

time.”

Matthew Jackson has served two years in state prison about seven years

ago for felony spousal abuse in connection with Carol Jackson, du Pont

said.

Carol Jackson has been sentenced to 90 days in Orange County jail, 80

hours of community service and three years of informal probation. Whether

she will serve her jail term in county jail or out of a residence under

what is known as “supervised electronic confinement” in lieu of jail will

be determined by a judge in six months, du Pont said.

Carol Jackson will also be required to go through psychiatric

counseling as part of her probation, she said.

She has been a physician on staff at Hoag Hospital since 1992,

hospital officials said. She is also a former faculty member at UC Irvine

and won a $314,000 settlement against the university in the mid-1990s for

alleged wrongful termination and sexual discrimination. UC Irvine had

also spent about $750,000 in attorney’s fees on that highly publicized

case.

The August assault was not Jackson’s only explosive encounter with

someone trying to serve her papers. About two years ago, she reportedly

threw an acid-like liquid at an employee from a Los Angeles law firm,

according to court papers. The employee had testified that he dodged the

caustic liquid, but “when it hit the concrete, white smoke rose from the

ground and then turned green.”

Newport Beach police still remember the August 2000 incident because

of its unusual nature, Sgt. Steve Shulman said.

“Process servers usually are at the receiving end of emotions from

spouses, especially in child custody cases,” he said. “It’s not that

common in our city, but it has happened in the past.”

* Deepa Bharath covers public safety and courts. She may be reached at

(949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .