Local sues UCI

Newport Beach man’s wife died while on the waiting list for medical center’s now-defunct liver transplant program.A Newport Beach family is one of nine that have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against UC Irvine Medical Center.

Kathleen Bond, 64, who was married to a Newport Beach businessman, died Feb. 8, 2004, while on the waiting list for a liver transplant at the medical center. Her husband, James, and her son, Douglas, have joined eight other Southern California families in the suit.

Lawrence Eisenberg, an Irvine-based attorney, is representing the nine families in the complaint, which was filed Friday with Orange County Superior Court. The suit seeks monetary damages and reimbursement for funeral and burial expenses.

“The Bond family are extremely upset with the way Kathleen Bond was treated at UCI,” Eisenberg said. “The liver transplant program never gave them complete disclosure regarding her chances for a liver transplant or that they did not have a full liver transplant surgeon available.”

The family could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Eisenberg said James Bond holds two patents in electricity production and had been married to Kathleen Bond for more than 40 years.

UCI spokesman Tom Vasich declined comment on the lawsuit, saying the medical center had not yet received a copy of it.

On Nov. 10, UCI shut down its liver transplant program after the federal government revoked its certification, citing a report by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about the program’s failings. That morning, the Los Angeles Times had published a story on the federal report, which it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

According to the Aug. 5 report, 32 patients had died over the last two years while on the waiting list for organ transplants at UCI, even as the medical center rejected donated organs due to lack of staff. The center had performed just five liver transplants this year and eight in each of the last two years -- far below the minimum number of 12 required by the federal government to keep funding.

In addition, from January 2002 to June 2004, only 68.6% of patients who received UCI liver transplants lived for at least a year. The federal government requires a 77% survival rate for certification.

Medical center chief executive Ralph Cygan is on administrative leave while a committee investigates the now-defunct liver transplant program. Vasich said that all other services at the hospital are continuing as before.

“There’s no interruption of any patient services whatsoever,” he said.

The complaint filed by Eisenberg faults UCI Medical Center on a number of counts, accusing it of withholding information from patients about their chances of receiving a transplant, failing to employ a full-time liver transplant surgeon and acting negligently in turning down donated organs. The suit also accuses UCI administrators and donors of conspiring to keep vital information from the patients and their families.

“Since UCI never gave complete information that they were not in compliance with federal and state regulations, the families had no knowledge that they had a potential claim until after these facts were divulged to the public,” Eisenberg said.

Although The Times’ Nov. 10 story broke the liver transplant issue to the general public, Eisenberg said he had known about the program’s failings a month earlier. Most of the nine families in the suit, he said, contacted him after the first media coverage, but some had approached him earlier. At the time the news became public, Eisenberg was busy doing research of his own on the history of the UCI liver transplant program.

“The nature and extent of the findings in the federal investigation were on a larger scale than I had anticipated,” he said.

The defendants named in the suit include UCI Medical Center, the UC Regents, Cygan and David Imagawa, who founded the liver transplant program and oversaw it until its closure.

Eisenberg said more families would likely file claims within the next week, including people who were on the UCI transplant list for years before receiving livers at other hospitals.

The lawsuit is the third that Eisenberg has filed against UCI this year. In February, he took the case of Andrea Razetto, a transplant patient who had waited on the UCI list for six years before receiving a transplant at a medical center in Chicago. Last month, Eisenberg filed a class action suit against the medical center. The cases are pending.