$100 Million Verdict for Infant Maimed in Circumcision by a Doctor Whose License Had Already Been Revoked
After trial: Default-style verdict against an unlicensed, unrepresented doctor with no known assets; the judgment is held in trust for the child but is considered uncollectable.
Won by Grossman Yaffa Cohen.
A Palm Beach County jury awarded $100 million against former OB/GYN Berto Lopez, who performed a catastrophic circumcision on a 10-day-old boy ten days after the Florida Board of Medicine revoked his license, though the unlicensed doctor skipped the trial and collection remains doubtful.
What happened
On February 5, 2021, the Florida Board of Medicine revoked the license of Berto Lopez, a West Palm Beach OB/GYN with a disciplinary record stretching back years. Ten days later, on February 15, Lopez performed a circumcision on a 10-day-old boy at his office. He never told the family his license had been revoked, and he obtained no written informed consent.
The procedure, which should have taken minutes, lasted about an hour while the newborn screamed. Lopez severed an artery and amputated roughly half of the glans, damaging the urethra. Rather than sending the baby for emergency care, he dismissed the parents' concerns, spent the better part of an hour trying to stop the bleeding himself, and sent the family home. The severed tissue was never preserved for reattachment, which made surgical reconstruction impossible. The family brought the boy to an emergency room the next day and was sent to a pediatric urologist, and his injuries are permanent.
Michael and Karol Lubben brought their son's case to Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen. Gary M. Cohen and Aimee Ferrer filed suit in the 15th Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach County, case 50-2022-CA-000905, with Karol Lubben acting as the boy's legal guardian. The complaint alleged negligent surgery, failure to recognize the severity of the injury, delay in referring the child to a specialist, and concealment of the license revocation. Press investigations had earlier tied Lopez to a string of patient injuries and deaths going back two decades, none of which the family knew when they walked into his office.
Lopez hired no lawyer and did not attend the trial before Judge Maxine Cheesman. Cohen told reporters that nearly the entire head of the child's penis had been transected or amputated. On August 27, 2024, the jury returned a verdict of $100 million: $25 million for past damages and $75 million for future damages for a boy who will live with the injury for the rest of his life.
The verdict comes with an honest caveat. Lopez was unlicensed and unrepresented, and the family has acknowledged he has no known assets, so collecting the judgment is doubtful. The father told reporters the family knew the doctor could not pay but hoped the verdict would get the attention of enough people. The award was placed into a trust for the boy, available for medical bills and care during childhood and accessible to him when he becomes an adult.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.CBS12 News -- $100 million awarded in Palm Beach County's boy botched circumcision case (2024)
- 2.CBS12 News: $100 million awarded in Palm Beach County botched circumcision case
- 3.Exlitem verdict report: Lubben v. Lopez, Palm Beach County Circuit Court
- 4.CNN Newsource via KESQ -- Boy mutilated by disgraced doctor awarded $100 million by Palm Beach County jury (Aug. 30, 2024)
- 5.CNN (via KEYT): Boy mutilated by disgraced doctor awarded $100 million by Palm Beach County jury
- 6.KRDO News (CNN Newsource) -- Boy mutilated by disgraced doctor awarded $100 million by Palm Beach County jury (Aug. 30, 2024)
- 7.NewsRadio WFLA -- Palm Beach County Family Awarded $100 Million Over Botched Circumcision (Aug. 2024)
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