California High-Profile Transgender Surgery Case May Increase Medical Malpractice Liability for Doctors and Hospitals
A California woman named Chloe Brockman filed suit against Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the Permanente Group, and several doctors for the damages she sustained after receiving hormone treatment and a double mastectomy when she was 15 years old.
When Chloe first sought treatment, she was a thirteen year old girl who was struggling with several health issues such as anxiety, speech difficulties, depression, body dysmorphia, self-image concerns, learning disabilities, autism spectrum symptoms, eating disorder. Doctors knew she suffered from various health issues. However, when Chloe first sought treatment and stated she believed she was a boy, doctors made no attempt to question or understand why she believed she was a boy. Instead, the doctors quickly prescribed puberty blockers and hormones to Chloe.
A mere two years later, Chloe’s doctors went a step further and guided her to go under the knife for a double mastectomy at the age of fifteen. This life altering surgery was done by Chloe’s doctors without providing Chloe and her parents with the proper informed consent which requires “regular therapy sessions over an extended period of time and assessment of the complete mental health condition of the patient.” Moreover, Chloe contends that “[t]here were no in-depth meetings with the parents to discuss the short and long-term harms and hoped-for benefits.”
In fact, Chloe believes the doctors and hospital “obscured and concealed important information such as … the conflicting studies in this area; the high quality evidence demonstrating poor mental health outcomes; the existence of only low to very low-quality studies purportedly supporting this treatment; the significant likelihood that desired outcomes would not be attained; the significant possibility of desistence, detransition and regret; and the lack of accurate models for predicting desistence and detransition….[and] the significant health risks associated with a biological female taking high doses of harmful male hormone drugs and off-label puberty blockers.” Finally, Chloe further claims that the doctors and hospital “falsely represented certain opposite facts, including that Chloe’s dysphoria would never resolve unless she chemically/surgically transitioned, and that she represented a high-risk of suicide unless she transitioned.” The lawsuit goes on to claim that this misconduct on the part of the doctors and hospital constitutes fraud, malice, and oppression.
Since that time, Chloe has detransitioned and suffers from “deep physical and emotional wounds, severe regrets, distrust of the medical system…. mutilation to her body and lost social and physical development along with her peers, and at key developmental milestones.” Chloe asserts that the doctors and medical staff pushed her “into this harmful experimental treatment regimen without a proper period of psychological evaluation, without evaluating and treating her serious co-morbidities, without providing informed consent, and while actively utilizing emotional super-charged and false information to derail the rational decision-making process of Chloe and her parents.” In other words, the doctors heard a thirteen year old child express confusion about her feelings and then encouraged her to engage in taking puberty blockers, hormones, and (later) a double mastectomy. Chloe was thirteen and could not drink alcohol, could not buy cigarettes, could not drive, could not vote, but her doctors believed that she could certainly make decisions to take chemicals that altered and (likely damaged) her body for life. Contrary to their required oath to “do no harm”, Chloe believes she was guided by medical personnel to make the life-altering decision to cut off perfectly healthy parts of her body while she was still a growing child.
Kaiser has fought hard to keep this case in arbitration, but a California court has recently held that the case does not need to go to arbitration. Instead, the case has been set for trial on April 5, 2027. This case is significant because it has the ability to change the way we view medical negligence and what may constitute medical negligence.
A recent case in New York has set a promising precedent for other courts nationwide. On January 30, a New York jury awarded a woman $2Million- $1.6 Million for pain and suffering and $400,000 for future medical expenses. The jury held a surgeon and psychologist liable for malpractice for a double mastectomy done on a young woman when she was sixteen years old. The jury found that the Defendants failed to communicate regarding the woman’s co-existing mental health issues of autism and depression. The lawsuit alleged that the woman was not properly diagnosed with gender dysphoria and the double mastectomy was not warranted nor was it a reasonable treatment.