Elam Must Close Practice While He Appeals Loss of License

A Sacramento appellate court, dealing Newport Beach cosmetic surgeon Michael Elam the latest legal blow in his bid to salvage his reputation, has ordered him to stop practicing medicine while he appeals the state’s revocation of his license, attorneys said Wednesday.

Vowing vindication, Elam said he closed his office temporarily as of Wednesday.

His Sacramento attorney, Richard Turner, said: “I don’t even know where to talk about how ridiculous this decision is. . . . It’s absolutely outrageous that this guy, the preeminent plastic surgeon in the United States, can’t practice medicine because of some outrageous charges.”

Elam, 42, has headed several national cosmetic surgery associations and gained wide exposure in 1983 when he helped redo comedian Phyllis Diller’s face, enabling him to draw steady lines of wealthy clients to his swank office near Newport Beach’s Fashion Island.

But his career was threatened in August when the Medical Board of California took away his license, finding that he and his former partner had forged $6,000 worth of insurance claims, botched a “tummy tuck” on one patient in 1981, and gave a former Mrs. California a nose job and cheek implants that she never wanted in 1984.

In September, Elam won an eleventh-hour reprieve when a Superior Court judge in Sacramento set aside the medical board’s decision and allowed Elam to keep his license--so long as he submitted to monitoring by another doctor and took a medical ethics course.

But the appellate court’s decision turned Elam’s fortunes around yet again. Without elaboration, the 3rd District Court of Appeal, on a 2-1 vote, temporarily reversed the Superior Court order, pending the outcome of Elam’s appeals.

That means that unless the Court of Appeal decides to give Elam his license back, he cannot practice cosmetic surgery.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Barry Ladendorf was elated by the decision. “As of now, Elam is out of business,” he said. “This is definitely a big victory for us, and we’ll be checking his office periodically to make sure he’s out of practice.”

Elam’s attorney, Turner, acknowledged that this most recent order makes his job tougher.

“We were hoping this would go away and it hasn’t, so now we’ve got to come up with a good opposition,” Turner said. “How this guy can be put out of practice for something that happened back in 1981 . . . is beyond me. It’s what kind of a surgeon he is in 1990 that matters.”

In an interview, Elam said: “I was railroaded. . . . Let’s put this in perspective--no one was killed, no one was maimed, no one was disfigured.”

Referring to the monitoring of his practice since September, he said: “The medical board has been all over me like a cheap suit for the last five weeks and they ain’t found nothin’ wrong. I will be vindicated.”