The plaintiff, who has only been identified as DB of Vienna, Virginia, sued the doctors and their practices for defamation and medical malpractice, and after a three-day-long trial, the jury ordered the anesthesiologist, Tiffany M. Ingham, 42, to pay a half a million dollars in damages.
DB intended to use his smartphone to record doctors’ instructions to care for himself after the procedure. What he recorded, however, were vicious insults and mockery, and even a doctor placing a false diagnoses on his chart.
“After five minutes of talking to you in pre-op, I wanted to punch you in the face and man you up a little bit,” Ingham was recorded saying.
When an assistant noted that DB had a rash on his penis, Ingham was recorded warning her not to touch it, saying that she might “get some syphilis on her arm or something,” before continuing on to say, “it’s probably tuberculosis in the penis, so you’ll be alright.”
“As long as it’s not Ebola, you’re okay,” gastroenterologist Soloman Shah, 48, was recorded stating during the discussion.
Ingham was also heard calling the patient a "big wimp,” and a "retard," joking about firing a gun up his rectum, wondering out loud whether he was gay, making fun of his alma mater (the University of Mary Washington), and threatening to falsely note on his chart that he had hemorrhoids — which she actually did do, Newser reported.
Ingham was ultimately ordered to pay $50,000 for the tuberculosis comment, $50,000 for warning the assistant not to touch his rash, as well as $200,000 in punitive damages, and $200,000 for medical malpractice.
Lawyers for the anesthesiologist tried to argue that the recording itself was illegal, but Virginia is a one-party consent state, meaning her permission was not needed to record.
