Dr. Pierce Dorman is a name that sent shivers down the spines of many Port Charles residents. Dorman was a man who earned the hatred of anyone he came into contact with. But looks were almost always initially deceiving, since Dorman had a habit of luring poor unsuspecting women into one trap or another, just to get himself ahead.

Dr. Dorman debuted in 1995, as a bigoted GH doctor who refused to treat Stone Cates for HIV. Dorman also lent Damian Smith his winter cabin, which Damian used to frame Katherine Bell for his murder and skip town. In 1996, breast cancer had devastated Dr. Monica Quartermaine. She was in remission, but the unattractiveness that she felt stayed with her. Unable to face her husband, Dr. Alan Quartermaine, certain he felt disgusted by her, Monica found herself talking to Dorman, who was a new surgeon on staff. Dorman found his boss extremely attractive, and began sending her anonymous gifts, much to Alan's dismay. But Monica was flattered by the attention that the handsome young doctor paid her. It was just what her battered ego needed and the two soon became romantically involved.

While Dorman continued to romance Monica, he also became Alan's doctor, as Alan's old hand injury acted up, requiring a surgery that Dorman had perfected. Alan was less than thrilled to have the man he suspected was sleeping with his wife as his surgeon. Alan wanted Monica back. Like most affairs in the Quartermaine family, this too was short-lived. It wasn't long before Alan and Monica reunited. Monica knew she had to break things off with Dorman, and set out to tell her lover that their affair was over. Only Dorman refused to let her go! The sweet, caring man that Monica knew quickly turned violent and Monica feared for her life, and Alan's, since Dorman was scheduled to perform surgery on Alan's hand, which would decide the fate of Alan ever being able to perform surgery again.

In 1997, when threatening to hurt Alan didn't bring Monica back to him, Dorman sued Monica for sexual harassment, alleging that his superior forced him to have sex with her in exchange for his continued employment at General Hospital. The Quartermaines, acquainted with scandal, were rocked by the news of the harassment suit. Suddenly, Monica's sex life was front-page news, which embarrassed the family, especially Alan and their teenage daughter Emily. But the Quartermaines weren't about to give up without a fight.

When Alexis Davis, one of the top litigators in the country, approached them about the case, Alan and Monica graciously accepted, despite the fact that she was a member of the diabolical Cassadine family that had recently returned to Port Charles. In Monica's bitterly contested winter trial, Ned took the stand and was forced to admit an embarrassing truth: that he had a brief affair, years earlier, with Monica at the Green Meadows Spa. The shocking revelation rocked Emily who killed her pain with drugs. A.J. drowned his anger with alcohol and Alan (whose hand had been surgically repaired by Dorman) with pain pills.

Sonny Corinthos was marked by Dorman when Dorman's first accomplice, Nurse Marilyn Cooper, drugged Sonny with heroin to make it appear as though Sonny overdosed. As Sonny closed in on Marilyn and was about to uncover her connection to Dorman, Dorman murdered his devoted lover to cover his tracks. Things were looking up for the Quartermaines until Dorman played his trump card. The last nail in Monica's coffin was Rebecca Chase, Dorman's sometime-lover, who perjured herself on the witness stand, claiming to have heard Monica tell Dorman that he would lose his job if he didn't sleep with her. Confronted with an "eyewitness," the jury had no choice, and Monica was found guilty of sexual harassment.

Monica's son Jason began investigating Dorman's connection to the Port Charles drug problem. Someone was running drugs in Port Charles against their wishes and Sonny and Jason didn't believe it was Jax, who stood accused by the Port Charles Police Department. Sonny and Jason began tracking Dorman's actions and found that he had some very interesting South American connections. While Jason and Sonny played detective, Emily reeled from her friend Matt Reynolds's death, and Monica slowly realized who was behind Matt's overdose and Emily's drug problem. Monica reached her breaking point when she realized that Dorman got Emily addicted to drugs to get revenge for Monica breaking things off with him. Monica was ready for a little vengeance of her own. Discovering the depths of Dorman's crimes, Monica captured him and injected him with Sodium Pentothal, and "tried him" for his crimes in a seedy hotel room. In a mock trial, she found her secret prisoner guilty on all counts and prepared to impose the ultimate punishment on him - a lobotomy. Jason stopped Monica from killing Dorman, and Mac arrested him. However, the mayor did not approve of Mac's tactics and fired him as Police Commissioner and released Dorman. Dorman wasn't through with the Quartermaines yet. Next, Dorman leaked Quartermaine family secrets to the press, after reading them from Emily's diary which Matt had stolen for Dorman, his drug dealer.

After Dorman exposed to the press that A.J. was responsible for the car accident that left his brother Jason with severe brain damage, Emily realized that Dorman found out about A.J. from her diary. It was Emily that had caused her family all this pain -- or so she felt. Emily's world spiraled out of control as she stumbled down the Quartermaine staircase. The Quartermaines rushed to General Hospital to be at Emily's side. The family scattered frantically around the hospital, Monica devastated by guilt, Ned trying to protect everyone, A.J. drinking, and Alan popping pills. Sonny and Brenda trailed Dorman to GH, as did Jason, all of whom were aware Dorman was responsible for Emily's drug problems. Everyone was at General Hospital when the electricity went off, plunging the hospital into darkness. Even Emily left her bed and grabbed a scalpel in the excitement. Dorman went to the morgue to retrieve a stash of heroin he'd hidden there. But he was not alone in the morgue -- he was stabbed in the heart with a scalpel!

Dorman had been murdered by one of his South American contacts, a hitman known as the "Tin Man," who made origami animals out of foil gum wrappers. The Tin Man set Brenda up to take the fall for Dorman's murder. Sonny and Jason broke Brenda out of jail and Sonny and Brenda went on the run. Jason's investigation of the Tin Man pointed Sonny and Brenda in the direction of Tiger Key Florida. The Tin Man learned what Jason was doing and tried to kill him and Robin at Mac's house. Jason was severely wounded, but managed to recover.

Meanwhile, the Tin Man realized that Sonny and Brenda were on the trail to find who was behind Dorman's murder and the drug trade. Sonny and Brenda soon discovered that it was Hernando Rivera, Sonny's former father-in-law, who had been the mastermind. Apparently Rivera had not died as Sonny had thought, but was ill and wheelchair bound. Rivera blamed Sonny for the death of his daughter Lily and wanted to kill Brenda for revenge.

Meanwhile, Jax learned that Brenda had escaped jail and he and his newfound friend, Officer V Ardanowski, tried to look for her and Sonny. They managed to track Sonny and Brenda down and helped free them from Rivera. Sonny wound up shooting Rivera dead and tracked down the Tin Man only to see him sink into the quicksand of the Florida swamps. Brenda and Jax discovered a library of video tapes in which Rivera admitted that he had Dorman killed and was responsible for the drug trade in Port Charles. The evidence cleared Brenda and made Dorman's name mud. The fallout over Dorman made it possible for Monica to clear her reputation and return to her duties at the hospital.