Newport Beach Doctor Awarded Millions Again in UC Irvine Trial

An Orange County jury awarded $5.8 million in damages to a Newport Beach based board-certified neurosurgeon who is also a tenured professor at the University of California (UC) Irvine.

It was the second lawsuit Dr. Mark Linskey filed against the University of California Regents.

“This time around the focus was really on the failure to reinstate him to the residency program,” said Linskey’s attorney Ivan Puchalt of Greene Broillet Wheeler LLP based in Santa Monica.

The jury found that UC leadership continued retaliating against Dr. Linskey well after an earlier 2019 verdict awarded him $2 million for similar allegations.

In 2019, Linskey alleged he was removed from the Department of Neurological Surgery in 2013 then restored in 2019 and also removed from UC Irvine’s residency program in 2018 but never reinstated despite a court order.

“My office is in the Department of Neurosurgery, but I’m kind of a pariah within the department,” Linskey told OrangeCountyLawyers.com. “I’m separate and the residents don’t work with me or learn from me.”

Second Trial Results in $5.8 Million Jury Verdict

The second trial, which lead to the hefty $5.8 million award, addressed reports of retaliation from November 2015 to the present, including Linskey’s removal from the Department of Neurological Surgery and UC Irvine’s Residency Program, which he alleges sidelined his career by stripping him of core teaching duties.

“They said it was likely they could lose accreditation and that the whole program would be shut down if Dr. Linskey was reinstated but there was no evidence of that,” Puchalt told OrangeCountyLawyers.com. “It was just all speculative.”

UCI Health did not respond to requests for comment.

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The case began in 2019 when Linskey filed whistleblower complaints against UCI Health officials in which he alleged there was a shift away from doing what is right for patients towards doing what is fiscally expedient to balance the budget.

“That shift was a real issue when it comes to quality of patient care and when it comes to patient safety,” Linskey added.

Linskey’s career at UC Irvine began in April 2004 when he was recruited to chair the Department of Neurological Surgery. Linskey felt that bad blood within the department persisted despite Clayman and Delawshaw’s departure.

Clayman is now dean emeritus of the UCI School of Medicine.

“I’m really pleased that the jury understood the case so well because it was a difficult case given how far it goes back and the retaliation starting with department chair, Delashaw,” Puchalt added. “He left in 2013.”

The trial attorney who represented the defendants, Stephen E. Ronk, did not respond to requests for comment.

Puchalt, who worked with his partner Mark Quigley on the case, expects the defendants to file post trial motions asking the court for a new trial.

“The judge will very likely deny all their motions, and then they have the right to file an appeal,” he added. “Unless they believe strongly in their appeal, we’ll probably get paid short of that.”

Image courtesy of Dr. Mark Linskey
Image of Ivan Puchalt courtesy Greene Broillet Wheeler LLP