Last year, a former employee tipped Baltimore Police off to the fact that Johns Hopkins gynecologist Nikita Levy was secretly filming patients. An investigation quickly turned up more than 1,300 videos and images; as many as 9,000 patients may have been affected in one way or another. Before he could be prosecuted, Levy killed himself — leaving the hospital to bear the brunt of the victims’ anger (and lawsuits).
Yesterday, Hopkins announced that it would pay a $190 million settlement to Levy’s former patients. According to the Baltimore Sun, it may well be the largest settlements on record for a physician’s sexual misconduct case. The good news is, no hospital employees are liable for criminal charges.
Lawyers’ statements highlight the on-going dispute; Hopkins’s attorney Donald L. Devries Jr. claimed that Levy was a “rogue employee” whose misconduct couldn’t have been prevented while Howard Janet, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that if the hospital didn’t know what Levy was up to, then they should have.
