A Los Angeles Superior Court jury has ordered Los Angeles County to pay over $600,000 to a physician who alleged workplace retaliation in a recent lawsuit, The Daily Breeze reported Aug. 30.
Timothy Jang, MD, is both a physician and professor at Torrance, Calif.-based Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he also served as director of the center's ultrasound fellowship program. In the lawsuit, Dr. Jang alleged that the hospital's emergency department chairman Roger Lewis, MD, PhD, ordered him not to hire foreign doctors as fellows and made racist comments in the workplace.
Dr. Jang allegedly faced retaliation for reporting this to the university and county — which is a joint owner and operator of the hospital — in the form of increased clinical workload and being passed up for promotions to senior physician, the report said.
"Ultimately, [the] plaintiff’s claims fail because there is no evidence that any of the actions taken with respect to his employment were motivated by anything other than Dr. Lewis’ legitimate efforts to safely and fairly manage a high-volume emergency department," the county lawyers argued in their court papers.
The jury awarded Dr. Jang a total of $603,610, with all but $150,000 of that award being allocated to his past and future loss of wages, the report said.