The office manager for former Roanoke pain specialist Cecil Knox was dropped from a civil lawsuit on Monday.

Beverly Gale Boone was named along with Knox and Southwest Virginia Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in a $1.5 million medical malpractice lawsuit filed in Roanoke County in 2004.

The suit was filed by Tammy Walton, whose late brother, Tracy Akers, was a patient of Knox's.

Akers, a quadriplegic for 19 years after he was shot as a teenager, died in February 2002 at age 37. Walton's lawsuit alleged that the defendants prescribed large doses of addictive narcotics and analgesics to her brother, eventually leading to his death.

Boone's attorney, Nancy Reynolds, said she argued Monday that a malpractice claim cannot be brought without proof that the defendant provided medical treatment to the patient.

Boone was an office manager, Reynolds said, and her contact with Akers included little more than scheduling appointments.

The plaintiff's attorney, Mary Hatch, said Boone was a nurse and should have known Akers was being improperly treated.

"Even if she were a nurse, and that was argued, there's still no evidence of treatment," Reynolds said.

Roanoke County Circuit Court Judge Jim Swanson agreed and granted summary judgment for Boone.

The case will continue against Knox and the practice and is scheduled for trial in June.

The practice has been closed since 2002, when Knox and Boone were charged with conspiring to illegally distribute prescription drugs, distributing narcotics for no legitimate purpose, racketeering and health care fraud, among other things.

Knox was under federal prosecution for four years before he pleaded guilty to three charges in September 2005. Boone entered into a pretrial diversion agreement, accepting responsibility for one misdemeanor health care fraud charge. Other charges against her were dropped.

"I am sorry that this family lost a loved one," Boone wrote in an e-mail. "But, as with the government's criminal case against me, I have been the victim of allegations unsupported by facts and forced to defend against those false accusations."