Verdicts & Settlements
Lawyer Expert in Botched Circumcisions Gets $2.3M Win
Posted Mar 31, 2009 11:22 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Lawyer David Llewellyn says a jury’s $2.3 million award for a botched circumcision is the highest he has obtained in the 14 years he has represented such victims, though he asked for even more money.
Llewellyn of Johnson & Ward represents victims of wrongful circumcision and genital injury, according to the Fulton County Daily Report. A jury in Fulton County, Ga., awarded $1.8 million to the boy and $500,000 to the mother, according to the Daily Report and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Llewellyn told the Fulton County Daily Report that he had sought $5 million in the case. His co-counsel, Craig Jones of Edmond Jones Lindsay, told the publication that the defense struck male jurors, producing a jury with 11 women and one man.
"The strategy of the defense side was that men would be more sensitive to a penis injury,” Jones said. “My experience has been that men aren't as sensitive about anything."
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Comments
B. McLeod
Mar 31, 2009 12:45 PM CST
Many, many comments suggest themselves, but I will leave this one to Kalifornia Arnold.
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Mark Lyndon
Mar 31, 2009 6:25 PM CST
The record payout for a botched circumcision is $22.8 million. It was said at the time that the victim “will never be able to function sexually as a normal male and will require extensive reconstructive surgery and psychological counseling as well as lifelong urological care and treatment by infectious disease specialists.”
Sure, cases like that are very rare, but why should they happen at all? If you look up the galleries of botched jobs, one thing that may surprise you is just how many jobs were botched cosmetically, rather than medically. Skin tags and skin bridges and hair growing half way up the shaft are not normal, but would not be counted as medical complications.
Time to stop cutting parts off babies’ genitals.
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Al Veoli
Apr 1, 2009 5:25 AM CST
Comment removed by moderator.
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Paul the Magyar
Apr 1, 2009 2:44 PM CST
It is butchery, plain and simple. Inexperienced physicians are assigned this supposedly simple procedure, but when they botch it, the consequences are horrendous. There is no humor in intentional or unintentional genital mutilation.
I believe that one child in New York was reported to have contracted genital herpes when, during a religious circumcision, the practitioner passed the virus to the child.
This procedure is most often an elective surgery and, under those circumstances, should only be elected by an adult with full control of faculties.
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Paul the Magyar
Apr 1, 2009 4:05 PM CST
“Rare Circumcision Ritual Carries Herpes Risk
By Jennifer Warner
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Ngozi A. Osondu, MDAug. 2, 2004—A rare Jewish circumcision practice may put young infants at risk for genital herpes with potentially severe complications, according to a new study.
Researchers in Israel have documented eight cases in which male infants became infected with the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) after undergoing circumcision that included direct oral-genital contact between the infant and the circumciser (mohel). One of the infants suffered brain damage as the result of his infection.”
Male circumcision is the removal of the foreskin (prepuce), which is a fold of skin that covers and protects the tip of the penis.
According to Jewish custom and traditions, newborn Jewish boys are ritually circumcised at eight days of age, and complications are generally very rare.
However, a small number of Orthodox rabbis advocate an ancient practice in which the circumciser sucks the blood from the infant’s circumcision wound until the bleeding stops, a ritual known as metzitzah.
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