UC Irvine Department of Neurological Surgery’s former chair, Mark Linskey, MD, has been awarded $5.8 million in a retaliation lawsuit against the university medical center, according to a May 24 report from the LATimes.
Dr. Linskey has been involved in litigation since 2016, when he claimed university officials retaliated against him after he spoke out about potential safety risks, abuse of power and economic waste at the system.
On May 9, an Orange County jury awarded damages based on retaliatory acts that Dr. Linskey said spanned from November 2015 to May 2025.
In 2019, Dr. Linskey was awarded $2 million from a jury after he won the lawsuit he brought against the University of California regents and two others, claiming his department leaders retaliated against him for filing a grievance in 2014.
“Having two sequential, unanimous jury verdicts is a very good feeling,” Dr. Linskey told the Times. “It’s vindication that good, honest people on a jury can see through to the truth and that our system works.”
In 2013, Dr. Linskey alleged that former department chair Johnny Delashaw, MD, and UCI surgeon Frank Hsu, MD, pulled certain patients from a neurosurgery on-call service and reserved them for their own care, with the support of UCI school of medicine dean Ralph Clayman, MD.
When he blew the whistle on these actions, Dr. Delashaw allegedly had Dr. Linskey relocated from the neurosurgery department. He then faced more retaliation from Dr. Delashaw and Dr. Hsu, causing him to file a whistleblower retaliation complaint through the UC system in 2014, according to the report.
A UC Irvine group eventually determined that the actions “had the appearance of retaliation.”
After the original lawsuit was decided, Dr. Linskey was moved back to the neurosurgery department, but was repeatedly denied opportunities, including the chance to access residents to lighten his case load. In 2016, he filed a lawsuit through the Orange County Superior Court, which he won.
The judge in the case ordered UC Irvine to allow Dr. Linskey access to residents and to the neurosurgical on-call schedule. Dr. Linskey claimed that UC Irvine still did not make those changes.
Dr. Linskey was awarded the $5.8 million for “past and future economic loss, along with past and future non-economic loss, including mental suffering, anxiety, worry, shame, humiliation and emotional distress.”
Dr. Hsu currently serves as the chair of neurological surgery at UC Irvine, while Dr. Delashaw left for a position with a different health system. Dr. Clayman now works in UCI’s department of urology.
UCI Health declined the LATimes’ request for comment.
