UCLA ABUSE PAYMENTS NEAR $700M

The University of California system agreed Tuesday to settle lawsuits brought by hundreds of alleged victims of a former UCLA gynecologist, bringing total litigation payouts to nearly $700 million.

The latest $374.4 million in settlements covers 312 former patients who sued alleging they were abused by Dr. James Heaps under the guise of medical examinations between 1983 and 2018.

Given that Heaps specialized in cancer treatment, some plaintiffs were cancer patients and a handful had late-stage cancers with a terminal diagnosis. One of those women died before the settlement was approved by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Tuesday.

The latest settlement comes on top of a $243.6 million settlement of more than 200 women’s lawsuits and a $73 million class-action settlement involving more than 5,000 patients of Heaps dating to 1983. In 2019, the UC system also paid $2.25 million to settle a lawsuit by a patient who alleged she was sexually assaulted in 2018.

In announcing plans to issue medical facility bonds, the UC system declared a portion would be used to fund the expected Heaps settlements because its available insurance coverage has been exhausted.

At the heart of the litigation are allegations that UCLA ignored multiple detailed complaints of abuse over decades. A UC system report found that UCLA repeatedly failed to investigate the allegations adequately. UCLA allowed Heaps to return to practice in 2018 to find new victims, the suits claim, even though top university officials knew of an ongoing internal investigation into the allegations.

Darren Kavinoky, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that even though UCLA investigators had already gathered extensive evidence against Heaps in 2018, the university “continued to pack his waiting room for months before his retirement and never announced they rooted out an alleged sexual predator” until his arrest in 2019.

Heaps still faces criminal charges involving seven patients. He has denied wrongdoing.