UC Irvine, which has paid millions of dollars in recent years to settle legal claims stemming from healthcare scandals, could face significant liability for the problems of its now-suspended liver transplant program, according to legal experts and attorneys involved in the previous cases.
UCI Medical Center said Thursday that it was halting liver transplants, hours after the federal government stripped the program's certification and said it was endangering its patients. In the last two years, a federal report showed, 32 UCI patients have died awaiting transplants, even as the hospital in Orange turned away scores of donated organs.
The experts interviewed Friday said they were not personally familiar with specifics of the UCI liver transplant program but suggested the university could face major legal exposure on the issue.
The university paid nearly $20 million to settle claims related to the UCI fertility clinic scandal of the mid-1990s, in which doctors stole patients' eggs and implanted them in infertile women. UCI also has paid at least $375,000 since 1999 to resolve claims stemming from its donated cadaver program.
Walter G. Koontz, a Newport Beach attorney who represented more than a dozen couples in the fertility scandal, said the case for plaintiffs in the current controversy is strengthened by the federal report that outlined deficiencies in the UCI liver transplant program.
"If the feds come in and decide to shut you down, as a general rule, that is going to give some significant teeth to civil liability," Koontz said. "It's negligence per se if the government has found that you've violated the regulations. It opens up the door for significant liability."
The state's 1975 Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act capped malpractice liability for noneconomic damages at $250,000.
But Koontz said that in the fertility cases he has won several settlements over that cap, including one for $1 million. He said he was able to show "constructive fraud" -- that the doctors, because of their specialized knowledge and expertise, should have informed their patients how the eggs and embryos were being used.
Dr. Ralph Cygan, UCI's chief executive, said hospital officials were bracing for any legal ramifications.
"I think that any time you have a situation like this, there is the potential that there is legal liability," he said. "Obviously we're evaluating the information, we'll be communicating with each and every patient [and] family about what we know and we'll just have to see how that unfolds."
