UCI faces more transplant suits

Newport resident is among plaintiffs charging hospital’s liver program with negligence.A retired Newport Beach engineer is among seven new plaintiffs who filed lawsuits Friday against UC Irvine Medical Center, citing wrongful death or negligence at the hands of its liver transplant program.

Magdi Hanna, 62, was a patient on the UCI transplant list for approximately two years before he transferred to UCLA and quickly received a new liver in January 2004. During Hanna’s time on the waiting list, according to Hanna and attorney Lawrence Eisenberg, the hospital rejected six donated livers and failed to inform him about the situation.

Hanna, along with 16 other families and former patients, is suing UCI, the UC Regents and several medical center leaders for damages. Eisenberg said his clients would need reimbursement for past medical expenses as well as possible future treatments.

“We would expect compensation in the range of seven figures, depending on the facts of the particular case,” the Irvine-based attorney said.

Hanna declined comment Friday. In a Los Angeles Times article earlier this month, he related the story of being told by a transplant coordinator about the six rejected livers. Afterward, Hanna told the Times, he confronted Dr. Sean Cao in a corridor of the hospital, and Cao replied that the livers had been of inferior quality.

Cao, who is named among the defendants in Hanna’s suit, did not return calls for this story.

Last week, nine families, including another from Newport Beach, sued UCI after their relatives died while on the waiting list for liver transplants. Another former patient had filed on her own behalf in February. The seven new suits, filed Friday with Orange County Superior Court, include three more wrongful death cases and four cases by former patients who left UCI for other transplant programs.

Of the four latter plaintiffs, only Hanna has received a liver since departing UCI. The other three patients were still on the waiting list when UCI shut down its liver transplant program on Nov. 10.

According to an Aug. 5 report by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 32 patients had died over the last two years while waiting for liver transplants at UCI. During that time, the medical center rejected a number of donated livers due to a staff shortage, at one point going more than a year without a full-time liver transplant surgeon.

“It is clear, from our investigation so far, that the conduct exhibited at the UCI liver transplant program was a breach of trust of the highest magnitude,” Eisenberg said.