Patient Unhappy With Operation Sues TV Station for Profile on Surgeon

When the plastic surgery didn’t turn out right, Jodie Bullock filed a lawsuit against the doctor.

But in a second case as unusual as the first was routine, she also sued the television station that had broadcast a profile of the surgeon and his technique, claiming that the news report was false and fraudulent and led her into the ill-fated operation.

The improbable claim of fraud against KHJ-TV, Channel 9, was given legal footing recently by an Orange County judge, who refused the station’s request to dismiss it. In doing so, the judge said the case is without precedent.

While a lawyer for the station calls the decision “a procedural skirmish” and said he is confident of victory, one legal scholar said the case is potentially significant for the mass media and its customers.

Watched Report

Bullock, represented by attorney Marc Goldstein of Newport Beach, claimed that she watched with interest a 1985 report by Channel 9 on a technique for breast augmentation surgery performed by Los Angeles physician Thomas R. Stephenson.

The report, promoted extensively in advance, described the procedure as “new, safe and painless,” according to the lawsuit. Stephenson was described as qualified and skillful and one of a handful of West Coast physicians able to perform the operation. A satisfied patient was also shown, who praised Stephenson’s work.

Bullock went to Stephenson and underwent the procedure, involving implantation of silicone through cuts made under the arm. The results were horrible, according to the lawsuit, leaving Bullock with scars, severed muscles and nerves, and permanent physical and emotional injuries.

‘Substantial Health Risks’

Goldstein alleged that in fact the procedure was not new, and posed “substantial health risks.” Stephenson had been placed in a program run by the Board of Medical Quality Assurance for drug and alcohol dependence, according to allegations in the lawsuit. And the satisfied patient in the TV report was Stephenson’s live-in lover and office manager, Goldstein alleged.

The station “deliberately suppressed the true facts and instead consciously and deliberately chose to broadcast a misleading and false story to the public,” according to the lawsuit.

The allegations are “outlandish” and the lawsuit’s description “bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual broadcast,” according to Douglas E. Mirell, lawyer for the station’s owner, RKO General Inc. Stephenson’s lawyer in the malpractice lawsuit, Randolph Even, said all claims have been denied.

“It was simply a one-shot broadcast by the station’s reporters, discussing a new surgical technique. This doctor was one of the people who was interviewed,” Mirell said.

Significant Ruling

Goldstein said the ruling by Orange County Superior Court Commissioner Ronald L. Bauer is significant. The ruling held that the First Amendment does not shield “false statements,” Goldstein said.

Filed last year, the lawsuit is in its infancy. Virtually no evidence has been gathered, leaving the debate so far purely on legal points.

The litigation so far has focused on half a dozen unusual cases in which media firms have been sued under unusual circumstances. They are not the typical defamation cases, in which the allegation is that false reports were printed that damaged the reputation of the person filing the lawsuit.

For instance, four days after a network special aired in 1974 depicting brutal conditions in juvenile detention facilities, a young woman was raped in a juvenile home in San Francisco. She attempted to sue the network, alleging the program “incited” the crime. But courts ruled the free speech clause of the First Amendment shielded the network from liability.

And an appeals court last year ruled that the First Amendment shielded Seventeen magazine from a claim that its tampon ads induced a young woman to buy the product, which triggered toxic shock syndrome. The publication did not sponsor or endorse the product, and the ad was clearly distinguishable from feature stories, according to the opinion.

Rare Instance

The Bullock case, at least so far, is one of the rare instances in this area in which a media defendant has failed to win dismissal of civil claims.

Prof. Ronald Talmo of the Western State University College of Law in Fullerton said the Bullock case poses interesting issues involving free speech. “The bottom line in these cases is that the First Amendment does not protect, for its own sake, false speech,” Talmo said.

Bullock’s next step is actually proving the fraud allegation--a difficult proposition, requiring proof of intent to engage in fraud, according to Talmo.