SACRAMENTO — Wendy Conner asked a San Diego doctor to smooth over a forehead scar in 2000. But her plastic surgeon injected fat from her abdomen into an artery in her head, permanently blinding her right eye.
Conner sued and eventually settled for what she says was a small sum. As part of that legal agreement, she promised not to turn the doctor in to state authorities. "It's a horrible thing when somebody does something so terrible to you, and then you have to cover for them for the rest of your life," she said.
For decades, negligent doctors and other professionals in California have deterred their victims from reporting them to state regulators by making silence a condition of settling lawsuits. Regulators, consumer advocates and lawmakers say these legally dubious gag clauses are among the most troublesome gaps in California's consumer protection efforts.
They are pressing to ban the stipulations, even though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to do so last year. The governor vetoed legislation that had passed with bipartisan support, saying that eliminating gag clauses "does not further the goal of making California more business-friendly."
"The whole practice is just unconscionable, and it deprives executive branch agencies of the information they need to do their job," said Julianne D'Angelo Fellmeth, the state-appointed independent monitor for the Medical Board of California. "I don't understand how the governor didn't see that the first time around."
Conner still will not publicly identify her surgeon even though the medical board in January forced the doctor, Richard M. Escajeda, to surrender his license. Investigators charged that the year after he blinded Conner, Escajeda botched a breast implant surgery in another woman and then failed to anesthetize her properly during a subsequent surgery, causing her to experience the entire painful operation.
There are other reasons besides gag clauses that regulators never learn of lawsuits that could be evidence of professional malfeasance. Court officials and hospitals, for instance, are required by law to report criminal convictions, disciplinary actions and civil judgments against doctors, but Fellmeth's evaluation of the medical board last fall found that many do not.
The problems are not limited to the medical profession. Under state law, attorneys and automobile makers are banned from trying to stop former clients from complaining to regulators, but there are no similar prohibitions for 230 other types of licensed professionals in California.
