CHESAPEAKE, Va. — Attorneys representing 1,040 women in a civil lawsuit against Chesapeake Regional Medical Center revealed details Wednesday about how hospital officials may have known about Dr. Javaid Perwaiz's alleged misconduct nearly three decades ago.
During a hearing in Chesapeake Circuit Court, medical malpractice attorneys Victoria Wickman and Anthony DiPietro told a judge they are fighting for access to internal hospital documents from 1996 when a whistleblower doctor first reported Perwaiz to hospital officials.
"Back in 1996, there was a whistleblower of an OBGYN at the hospital who informed the hospital that Dr. Perwaiz was engaging in this type of activity," Wickman said in an interview after the hearing. "He testified at the Virginia Board of Medicine's hearings at the time. As a result, they reprimanded him."
But Wickman said the misconduct continued.
"The following year he found out that the doctor was doing the same thing again, so he reported them once again. They held another hearing and they performed an investigation in which that whistleblower doctor submitted cases of seven women, and apparently that was reviewed by a nurse, and we don't have that result of that investigation."
The hearing comes just one day after News 3 reported that the U.S. Department of Justice reached a $12.8 million tentative settlement with Chesapeake Regional Medical Center over allegations that the hospital submitted false claims to Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary procedures performed by Perwaiz.
Prosecutors reach tentative agreement with CRMC for charges based on former OBGYN’s crimes
Judge Linda Bryant made a mixed ruling Wednesday, blocking most general discovery requests but allowing the attorneys to pursue evidence related to sovereign immunity issues. The attorney representing the hospital argued the case would create "extraordinary inconvenience" given the massive scope involving almost 1,050 plaintiffs.
"This is not your run of the mill case," the attorney representing the hospital told the court, noting the cases are currently spread across seven different lawsuits and involve voluminous medical records spanning years.
The attorneys are seeking access to what they describe as a "trove of emails" between internal hospital personnel, including nurses and the director of financial services who handled billing to insurance companies.
"There are a trove of emails going back and forth between internal administrative personnel at the hospital, and we're entitled to that discovery," Wickman said. "What did they know and why did they do nothing about it? I mean, we know that they knew. The number one question is why didn't they do anything about it, and there's only one answer to that."
DiPietro said the case numbers continue to grow rapidly.
"Right now we have 1,040 cases that are filed. We have dozens more that we're investigating and preparing to file as well," he said. "Our phones have been ringing almost nonstop the past 24 hours since people are seeing the news about the DOJ."
Watch previous coverage: Lawsuit against Chesapeake Regional over Perwaiz surgeries reaches 1,000 victims, $10B
The attorneys are calling this the largest medical exploitation case in American history.
"It's unprecedented what happened at Chesapeake Regional Medical Center," DiPietro said. "The degree of cover up, not over months or years, but over decades, this is the single largest exploitation medical exploitation case in the country involving a hospital that didn't focus on healing. They were focused on stealing."
Among the 1,050 plaintiffs are three men who the attorneys clarified were actually premature babies who were allegedly harmed by unnecessary procedures by Perwaiz.
The case involves questions of sovereign immunity since Chesapeake Regional is operated by the Chesapeake Hospital Authority, whose board members are appointed by the city council. However, Wickman argued that immunity shouldn't apply to alleged fraudulent conduct.
"Is defrauding women and engaging in conduct that is not to their benefit for their health, is that something that's going to be protected, or are hospitals allowed to engage in fraudulent conduct and get away with it because they are a pseudo governmental agency?" Wickman said. "You don't get to be a bad actor simply because you may or may not be an arm of the government."
Judge Bryant suggested consolidating the seven separate lawsuits into one master complaint with individual docket numbers for each patient to help the clerk's office manage the massive case load.
"That would be 1,040 individualized docket numbers that fell under one master complaint," Wickman explained.
When asked about potential settlement discussions, Wickman said they're focused on moving forward with litigation. "We don't bring these cases looking for settlement. We look for a day in court," she said. "We don't ever turn down any meaningful negotiations that give the patients justice and that holds the defendants accountable."
Watch previous coverage: True Crime 757: The 'incalculable' human toll of convicted OBGYN Dr. Javaid Perwaiz
DiPietro emphasized their goal is accountability. "One of the things that we've seen time and time again is that institutions like CRMC don't care about patient safety. They don't care about health and well-being of individuals, and they don't care about the community at large. The only thing they care about is their money," he said. "If that's what matters to them the most, then we want to hit them where it hurts them the most, as hard as we can to make sure they never let this happen to another person going forward."
The judge will revisit the discovery issues after October 28th. The DOJ settlement is still pending and requires court approval, with the hospital expected to admit to certain facts as part of the agreement.
Perwaiz was sentenced to 59 years in federal prison in 2020 after being convicted of performing hundreds of unnecessary surgeries and procedures on women over more than a decade.
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