LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A jury verdict that awarded $14 million to a former UCLA hematologist who said she was forced out of her job as director of the medical school’s lymphoma program because a male-dominated administration ignored her complaints of gender discrimination will stand, a judge has ruled in denying the UC Regents a third trial of the case.
The Los Angeles Superior Court panel reached its verdict May 9 in a retrial of Dr. Lauren Pinter-Brown’s lawsuit originally filed against the UC Regents in June 2016. In a ruling Tuesday, Joseph Lipner said there were no grounds to try the case again.
Pinter-Brown, now 69, won $13 million in the first trial of the case in 2018, but the verdict was overturned by a panel of the Second District Court of Appeal in 2020 on grounds of judicial error. Among other things, the appellate justices noted that the first trial judge told the prospective jurors that “the arc of the moral universe is long,” quoting Martin Luther King, and that “if you are selected as a juror, your job will be to help bend that arc toward justice,” a remark potentially prejudicing jurors against the UC Regents.
In their court papers filed previously with Lipner in advance of Tuesday’s hearing, UC Regents attorneys maintained a third trial of the case was justified.
“This court should grant the regents’ motion for a new trial on the ground of insufficient evidence … and a new trial is also warranted on the ground of excessive damages,” the UC Regents lawyers argued in their court papers.
Pinter-Brown tried to circumvent the statute of limitations by contending that she was forced to quit when she left UCLA in December 2015, but she failed to prove such a discharge or that it was caused by gender discrimination, according to the UC Regents’ attorneys’ pleadings, which further stated that the regents did not have “actual knowledge” of any “objectively intolerable working conditions” when the plaintiff left.
The defense attorneys also maintained that the damages awarded Pinter- Brown for her out-of-pocket losses as well as her pain and suffering were excessive, noting that the plaintiff’s psychiatrist concluded the doctor is “is pretty much cured today, has mostly recovered from her (post-traumatic stress disorder) and doesn’t have clinical depression.”
However, the judge said there were no grounds for a third trial on any issues raised by the defense lawyers, including those of excessive out-of- pocket damages or those for pain and suffering.
“The regents’ arguments about the (out-of-pocket) damages are the same as its arguments presented at trial,” the judge wrote. “These are fact arguments and the jury rejected them.”
.Addressing the pain and suffering damages, Lipner found that the “facts of the current case support the … damages awarded by the jury.”
Pinter-Brown, an expert in T-cell lymphoma research, testified during the first trial that her work conditions at UCLA were intolerable.
“I lived in a state of terror, basically,” she said. “I was anxious all the time.”
Pinter-Brown testified she was repeatedly berated for her clinical trial work by a subordinate physician, Dr. Sven De Vos, who also once turned his back to her during a meeting and often interrupted her when she spoke.
“I was trying to establish myself as someone who was respected,” Pinter-Brown said. “It was like the butt of a joke.”‘
In contrast, De Vos was “very collegial” with male doctors, Pinter- Brown said.
Pinter-Brown, who was given the lymphoma program directorship in 2005, was later replaced by de Vos.
Pinter-Brown said conducting a clinical trial with the right patients is crucial so that drug companies will trust the physician in charge. But she said that when she successfully obtained FDA approval of a particular drug for lymphoma treatment, a male colleague replied, “Should I care?”
Another male colleague said Pinter-Brown should move her practice outside the university and help patients with ovarian cancer, even though her expertise was in the field of lymphoma, she said.
Pinter-Brown said she made as much as $250,000 less than her male counterparts, but was told by one physician that her pay was below what men received because she had the assistance of a nurse practitioner.
Outside the university setting, Pinter-Brown was praised for her work at medical conferences and doctors and patients from around the world consulted with her, she said.
“It was like night and day,” she said.
In their earlier court papers, UC Regents attorneys stated that UCLA began investigating plaintiff’s clinical research in 2011 after routine audits revealed serious issues with (her) record-keeping and management and plaintiff failed to offer timely responses to audit findings.
In late 2015 or early 2016, when Pinter-Brown left UCLA to work at UC Irvine, the plaintiff had all her research privileges and was receiving her full salary, the UC Regents attorneys further stated in their pleadings.
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