A man sued Safe Sedation LLC and Safe Sedation Management in Fairfax County Court after he claimed the doctors mocked him while he lay unconscious during a colonoscopy.
The man is listed as “D.B.” in the lawsuit, and he originally sought $1 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages, according to a Courthouse News Service article.
D.B. inadvertently left his phone on record after he wanted to record the post-operation instructions given to him immediately before being put to sleep. When he listened to the recording on the way home from the hospital with his wife, they discovered several jokes and inappropriate comments made by the medical staff at his expense.
The lawsuit claims, “On April 18, 2013, during a colonoscopy, plaintiff was verbally brutalized and defamed by the very doctors to whom he entrusted his life while under anesthesia.”
D.B. claims Dr. Tiffany Ingham, M.D. made comments directed at D.B. while he was asleep including, “And really, after five minutes of talking to you in pre-op I wanted to punch you in the face and man you up a little bit.”
Dr. Tiffany Ingham allegedly joked about firing a gun up the patient’s rectum. The medical staff also allegedly joked about D.B. having syphilis, and tuberculosis in the penis, despite him not having any of those ailments.
The lawsuit described how, “Tiffany Ingham, M.D. then stated to all present in the operating suite that, ‘It’s probably tuberculosis in the penis, so you’ll be all right.”
The lawsuit claims Ingham also said about the plaintiff, “Are you implying that he’s gay? Because I know gay men that have more manliness than’ the plaintiff.”
In one of the last remarks made about D.B., Ingham claimed she would list hemorrhoids on his file, even though he did not have any.
D.B. won his lawsuit, and was awarded $200,000 in punitive damages, $200,000 for medical malpractice, $50,000 for the comment about tuberculosis on D.B’s penis, and $50,000 for a comment warning an assistant not to touch a genital rash D.B. allegedly had.
