LOS ANGELES : Ex-Marine Seeks $30 Million for Mistaken Hysterectomy

An ex-Marine who was left with a hole in her abdomen after doctors mistakenly removed her reproductive organs sued the government Tuesday for $30 million.

Lori Jolley, a former sergeant who was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, said Tuesday that she has hired two Pasadena lawyers to handle her lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court.

Jolley is now disabled and living in Pico Rivera, according to Richard Harding and Louise Lewis, who will represent her.

Harding called his client a “courageous, outstanding woman whose life was shattered on April 29, 1986,” when she was admitted to a naval hospital outside San Diego for an appendectomy.

“From that day on,” he said, “she became a second-class citizen, or worse, a pariah who was shunned and mistreated by the very systems that had victimized her.”

Jolley, 32, alleges that her paperwork got mixed up with another patient’s. The incision never healed properly, leaving Jolley with a five-inch abscess until last June, when a Century City surgeon grafted muscle from her leg to close the abdomen wound.

Jolley alleges that she was improperly discharged from the military, that the Department of Veterans Affairs denied her disability payments and medical benefits, and that doctors at the Long Beach Veterans Administration hospital denied her treatment.

Doctors at the Long Beach medical center claim that their actions were appropriate, and that Jolley did not show up for appointments.