UCI Medical Settles $11.6 Million Leg Amputation Case

What began as routine arthroscopic knee surgery at UC Irvine Medical Center in April 2024 ended in catastrophe for Wayne Wolff.

A vascular injury during the procedure led to the amputation of the 59-year-old’s leg.

“I just don’t think this should have ever, ever happened,” Wolff’s attorney Jeoffrey Robinson of Robinson Calcagnie, Inc. said. “He went in for routine outpatient surgery and came out two weeks later without a leg.”

Wolff and his wife Lisa sued the Regents of the University of California and Dr. Dean Wang, a board certified orthopaedic and sports medicine surgeon.

Wang serves as the chief of UCI’s sports medicine division.

“This was a very experienced, highly touted surgeon who was not prone to mistakes per se that I’m aware of but what he clearly had was, like some of these surgeons, a God complex where he figured he can do no wrong, and if he is wrong, he’ll fix it,” Robinson said.

UC Irvine Medical Center did not respond to requests for comment.

At first, Robinson felt Wolff’s case would be an uphill battle but he was impressed with his client’s character, which became a motivating factor. Wolff is an electrician by trade and his wife is a nurse practitioner.

“It didn’t change the challenge but it changed your heightened motivation,” Robinson told OrangeCountyLawyers.com. “When you meet and interact with someone as good, decent, and honest as these people were, you want to go to the moon and back.”

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California’s Medical Malpractice Caps a Major Hurdle

The outcome was an $11.6 million settlement however the road was not without obstacles. The first was the law, itself. California’s 1975 voter-approved limit on non-economic medical malpractice damages loomed like a mountain.

“When you have a cap like that, there’s a natural deterrence,” Robinson said.

Another formidable foe was UCI’s unwillingness to divulge information, according to Robinson.

“I believe that UCI made the decision early on that they were not going to provide certain information that would expose how bad they were in this case,” he said. “They made a decision to basically obfuscate and then to destroy evidence.”

Robinson enlisted the highest-caliber medical professionals to reconstruct the surgery, testify to the departure from standard of care, and explain technical failures. A trial date was set for June 29 but after Robinson filed a motion for sanctions and a hearing was set for April 22, the parties reached a settlement.

DOWNLOAD THE MOTION FOR SANCTIONS

The requested sanctions were for alleged intentional spoliation and destruction of evidence as well as discovery abuse and concealment by the defendants.

“It was never heard,” Robinson said of his motion for sanctions. “They had stonewalled us on depositions. We were having a hell of a time trying to get depositions, and Dr. Wang had yet to be deposed.” Robinson worked on the case with his law partner Patrick Embrey.

The medical center invoked a 30-day purge policy as a defense for destroying surgical video and staff communications.

“My client’s wife, a surgical nurse, submitted a 3-page grievance letter that made litigation inevitable,” Robinson added. “Two weeks after that, they destroyed the video. Cloud storage, they said, was getting too full.”

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