Doctor Refuses to Settle Malpractice Suit for $1, Faces Trial

Rejecting a Moorpark woman’s offer to settle her malpractice claim for just $1, a Thousand Oaks obstetrician is insisting that the 1998 lawsuit go to trial this week so he can clear his name.

“My goal is to protect that which is most sacred to me, my reputation, which is my stock in trade,” said Dr. Edward M. Feldman, 57, onetime chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Los Robles Regional Medical Center.

“I’ve been told by my malpractice firm, ‘You’ve won. Give them a hundred pennies on the courthouse steps,’ ” Feldman said in a recent interview. “But if I give them a dollar, then who wins the lawsuit? I’ll never settle.”

The Municipal Court trial of Feldman, 58, is set to begin today in the Simi Valley Courthouse.

Plaintiff Amber Onstot, 37, and her attorney husband, Stephen, 39, allege that Feldman repeatedly hurt her during vaginal exams to scare her into a caesarean-section delivery so that the doctor could go on a Florida vacation.

They say that for his own convenience and because he would be paid more for a caesarean than for a vaginal delivery, the obstetrician misdiagnosed the expectant mother as having a tailbone deformity and high blood pressure.

“This isn’t a case of somebody just leaving a sponge in a patient’s body, this involves a breach of trust,” said Stephen Onstot, who is acting as his wife’s lawyer in the case. “Amber went out looking for a doctor who was going to be there for her delivery. She trusted him to be there. Then he books his vacation to Florida.”

Feldman denies having done anything wrong. He saw Amber Onstot 19 times during her pregnancy and administered several special tests to ensure her health and that of her baby. There was no infliction of pain, no misdiagnosis, and Onstot was never injured, he maintained. And the baby was born healthy.

“None of it is true,” he said.

The Onstots’ case against Feldman was elevated beyond a minor malpractice dispute in August, when county court Commissioner John Pattie allowed the Onstots to amend their suit to add a complaint of battery.

That opened the door for jurors to award financial damages to punish the doctor if they found him guilty of fraud, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

But this year on appeal, the battery complaint and the possibility of punitive damages were thrown out of the case.

Then, two weeks ago, a state arbitrator ruled for Feldman, finding no evidence of fraud or negligence and directing the Onstots to pay Feldman’s legal costs. But the arbitration was not binding, leaving open the option of this week’s trial.

Feldman and the Onstots say they are ready for trial.

Doctors who betray the trust of their patients must be held accountable, Stephen Onstot said.

“What we wanted all along was to just get an apology or some acknowledgment that what he did was wrong,” Onstot said. “We don’t want to put a pool in our backyard and every time we swim in it we think about this case. We want to put it behind us.”

But Feldman says that he was the victim and that the Onstots’ were hustling a big payoff as long as they thought they could get it. The only reason they have lowered their demands, he said, is that they see they could lose and be subject to a malicious-prosecution countersuit.

“This case was always about money,” the doctor said. “They think I have deep pockets. They perceived me as being a wealthy man.”

Indeed, Feldman lives in a large house in the exclusive North Ranch area of Westlake, and his wife, Pattie, is the daughter of Sam Shulman, former owner of the Seattle Supersonics basketball team.

To determine the Onstots’ motivation, the doctor said, all one needs to do is read their letters of proposed settlement from August through February. They tried to use the threat of news media coverage to force him to pay up, he said.

That’s why the couple’s settlement offer soared from $25,000 to $60,000 two days after The Times printed a story about the case on Sept. 15, Feldman said.

In a letter to Feldman’s attorneys reviewed by The Times, Onstot said, “I am convinced we significantly undervalued our case.”

He noted the published news story and said: “We have had other contacts with both the print and electronic media.”

In the same letter, Onstot mentioned Feldman’s “significant assets” and said, “We are investigating financial ties that your client and his wife may have to ownership interest in professional sports franchises.”

Onstot said he was planning to take out an ad in a local newspaper asking former and current Feldman patients to contact him with any information relevant to the lawsuit.

“We certainly understand that adverse publicity is not helpful to a professional’s business, and you know that Amber is very active in local ‘mommies clubs’ in Moorpark and Thousand Oaks, and she is involved with an extensive network of birth coaches, ‘play groups’ and other associations whose purposes are to promote good parenting,” Onstot wrote.

“I tell you this because, obviously, Amber’s friends talk, and we have received a tremendous amount of support from them in this matter, especially since the news story broke.”

A week later, Onstot followed with a letter that said Feldman needed to agree to pay $60,000 that day or the Onstots would tell their story to the television program “Inside Edition.”

“If your client wishes to avoid the ‘Inside Edition’ videotaping, we must have a mutually acceptable written agreement . . . by 5 p.m. today,” the letter said. “ ‘Inside Edition,’ which Onstot said contacted him, has not run a story on the case.

On Jan. 20, the Onstots again increased the amount, demanding $60,000 from Feldman for a Ventura patient advocacy group and $15,000 to cover their legal costs to settle the case.

“We feel it reasonable to give Dr. Feldman an opportunity to avoid 10 days of adverse media publicity,” Stephen Onstot wrote, maintaining that two newspapers intended to cover the trial.

In an interview last week, Onstot said he was not attempting to leverage Feldman into settlement by threatening him with bad publicity.

“We indicated we were willing to try to reach some resolution before other media events hit,” Onstot said. “Our intent was not to drag him through the mud.

“We promoted early-on settlement to avoid adverse publicity to him because he basically derives his business and his income from word of mouth and publicity,” he added. “We’re not interested in putting him out of business or taking his patients away.”

Meanwhile, Pamela Hasner-Owens, founder of Patient Advocacy Management in Ventura, found herself in the middle of the nasty dispute.

Shortly after New Year’s, Onstot approached her about receiving $60,000 of the Feldman settlement, she said. But when Feldman refused to pay, Onstot asked her to send agency volunteers to picket Feldman, Hasner-Owens said.

“I said, ‘We’re above that. We’re not in that league,’ ” she recalled.

About that time, she also got a call from Feldman, she said. The doctor used another name and misidentified himself as a news reporter to ask about her nonprofit group, she said. But when she called him back by using an automatic recall device, she discovered that Feldman was the caller.

“I was shocked. And he apologized,” she said. “But when Dr. Feldman got on the phone he started telling me about the Onstots, all about their personal business.”

Now Hasner-Owens is listed as a trial witness, she said. “But I don’t want to put my feet in this muddy water,” she said.

On Feb. 25, the day after the adverse arbitrator’s ruling, the Onstots offered Feldman a better deal: The case would be over if the doctor would pay them just $1.

“That settlement would mean a judgment is entered against him and he admits he did wrong,” Onstot said last week. “That’s what we wanted all along.”

But Feldman--who won a silver star for bravery as a combat surgeon in Vietnam--said the case is a matter of honor.

“This all goes to character, what I’ve been to my patients, my family and my country,” he said. “I am very angry. But I’m an honest man.”