Dozens of patients file suit against former OB-GYN and Cedars-Sinai, alleging misconduct
Thirty-five women are suing a Beverly Hills obstetrician-gynecologist, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and other medical practices where the doctor worked, alleging decades of sexual and medical misconduct that the health facilities enabled and concealed.
The lawsuit, filed late Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that Dr. Barry Brock had, for years, made lewd and unsettling comments to patients; groped their breasts and genitals during medically unnecessary exams, sometimes without gloves; and engaged in “female genital mutilation” by giving women unneeded sutures, among other reported misconduct.
The suit also alleges the longtime physician denied cesarean sections to patients who needed them.
Brock has previously denied any wrongdoing or sexual misconduct.
“I know that I never touched or examined a patient in any way for anything but medical reasons. I know that my comments have never been sexually suggestive or sexual harassment, and that any such allegations have taken a comment completely out of context and distorted it,” Brock told The Times earlier this year.
“Any claim that I performed a medical examination or procedure for anything but a medical purpose or conducted it in a way for my own personal gratification, to discourage C-sections, or to sexually harass a patient is an outrageously false claim,” Brock said.
An obstetrician-gynecologist has been barred from practicing at Cedars-Sinai following an investigation into complaints. The doctor has denied wrongdoing.
Brock did not immediately provide comment Tuesday on the specific allegations in the lawsuit.
Cedars-Sinai said in a statement Tuesday that the kind of behavior alleged about Brock, who is no longer practicing medicine at its facilities, is “counter to Cedars-Sinai’s core values and the trust we strive to earn every day with our patients.”
“We recognize the legal process must now take its course, and we remain committed to Cedars-Sinai’s sacred healing mission and serving our community.”
The doctor is also facing an accusation before the Medical Board of California, where he is accused of committing “repeated negligent acts.” According to the official complaint, Brock failed to give a patient enough pain medication while treating her for a miscarriage, and failed to properly clear material from her uterus, among other accusations.
In a statement, Brock said the events outlined in the accusation were not an accurate description of his treatment of the patient and that some allegations were “completely inconsistent with my practices.”
For instance, Brock said he always wore gloves during pelvic exams and could not imagine refusing to address severe pain suffered by a patient. “Based on what I know of my care and treatment of this patient,” he said, “I will successfully defend my treatment as being within the standard of care.”
Brock, 74, said he had been an attending physician at Cedars-Sinai since the early 1980s, and had never before faced an accusation from the medical board.
He left its physician network in 2018 but retained hospital privileges at Cedars-Sinai while working in private practice at Rodeo Drive Women’s Health Center and Beverly Hills OB/GYN, which were also named as defendants in the lawsuit. Both organizations had yet to respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
In July, Cedars-Sinai said it had suspended Brock’s hospital privileges after receiving “concerning complaints” from his former patients. A few months later, his hospital privileges were terminated.
At that time, a spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai said that privacy laws prohibited the medical center from confirming the existence of any patient complaints or disciplinary action taken against Brock before this year.
The lawsuit alleges that both patients and medical staff reported concerns about Brock to Cedars-Sinai long before the complaints that led to the termination of his hospital privileges.
Cedars-Sinai administrators received “ample and repeated warnings” about his misconduct and abuse of patients through past lawsuits, as well as complaints to the state medical board and to the health system itself, the lawsuit alleged. Yet the medical center and other defendants continued to “expose more unsuspecting female patients to a known serial sexual predator,” the suit alleged.
Plaintiffs are represented by a legal team that includes Anthony T. DiPietro, an attorney who has also represented patients of convicted sex offender Robert Hadden, formerly a gynecologist at Columbia University, and attorneys who represented patients of former USC gynecologist George Tyndall.
The complaint details allegations from 35 former patients ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s. Some saw Brock only once and refused to see him again, while others were treated by him repeatedly over a period of years. The timing of their care ranges from the mid-1980s to this year, according to the complaint.
Nearly a dozen patients alleged unnecessary suturing or crude comments about it: Brock told several plaintiffs he inserted an “extra stitch” in their perineal areas to make them “tighter” after childbirth, the lawsuit said.
In one instance, according to the lawsuit, Brock said, “I’m going to sew her up virgin-tight” in front of her husband and parents after childbirth. In another, Brock told a woman that she had not suffered any tearing, but told her husband, “Don’t worry dad, I’ll throw a stitch in there for you,” and proceeded to suture her without her consent, the lawsuit alleged.
Some suffered ongoing pain or urinary complications after “this barbaric and entirely unnecessary form of female genital mutilation,” the lawsuit said. Doctors for one patient described the stitching as “the equivalent of a female circumcision,” the lawsuit said.
California’s surgeon general unveiled a new initiative Tuesday aimed at reducing maternal mortality, setting a goal of halving the statewide rate of deaths related to pregnancy and birth by December 2026.
The lawsuit also included allegations of violent and threatening behavior. One former patient alleged that Brock “violently thrust” a speculum into her vagina, opened it and “proceeded to pump the instrument in and out of her, simulating intercourse.”
The woman said she reported the experience and other concerning encounters with Brock to an executive at Rodeo Drive Women’s Health Center, where Brock worked at the time. No action was taken against him, according to the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, two women alleged that he forced them to feel his erection. One said he had “proceeded to rub his erect penis against her hand” while she was alone with him in an exam room, the lawsuit said.
Another alleged that while she was in labor, Brock walked in and put her foot on his erection, then grabbed her foot again when she tried to move it away.
The lawsuit also alleged that Brock forced patients to undergo sensitive physical exams even after they refused. A decision to do a pelvic or breast exam should be a shared one between a physician and a patient, the lawsuit said, and “such invasive procedures should never be performed without the patient’s knowledge, understanding, and consent.”
In one case, the lawsuit said, Brock pulled down the pants of a woman who refused a vaginal examination in front of her daughter and “was so aggressive that [the woman] immediately ran out of the room in tears.”
Another patient alleged that Brock ignored her when she said a breast exam was unnecessary. Instead, the complaint alleges, he unhooked her bra, squeezed her breasts and told her, “You have perfect breasts. Does your husband tell you that?”
She was one of five women who said he removed their bras without consent before touching their breasts, according to the complaint.
Other patients alleged that Brock refused to leave the room as they undressed or denied their request for a hospital gown, requiring them to go through examinations naked. (In response to questions about the medical board accusation, Brock said he either leaves the room or turns or looks away while a patient changes behind a protective curtain, and that he had never asked a patient to undress in front of him.)
Many described sexual remarks: One said Brock told her that her vagina looked “ripe” and peppered her with invasive questions, such as asking whether her partner would ejaculate on her body during sex, according to the lawsuit. Several patients noted that while examining the women’s genitals or breasts, Brock commented on how “lucky” or “happy” their partners must be, the suit said.
The lawsuit alleges that Cedars-Sinai was repeatedly informed about concerns with Brock. One patient who saw him between 2011 and 2013 reported his behavior to office staff and asked to switch to a different doctor, according to the lawsuit. Another who saw him in 2018 and 2019 informed her regular physician, who was also affiliated with Cedars-Sinai, about his actions, the suit said.
Another former patient, herself an employee of Cedars-Sinai at the time, filed a formal complaint with the medical center after a 2017 prenatal appointment in which Brock allegedly groped her breasts “under the guise of medical care” and made inappropriate comments to her and her husband, according to the suit.
Though she was told there would be consequences for Brock — who was in Cedars-Sinai’s physician network at the time — she heard nothing more from the medical center, the complaint states.
The lawsuit said another patient who tried to report misconduct to Cedars-Sinai earlier this year was initially told that the medical center wouldn’t take action because the doctor was in private practice.
She then contacted Beverly Hills OB-GYN, which had referred her to Brock after her usual physician was unavailable. When she received no response after sharing her experience, the woman lodged a formal, written complaint with Cedars-Sinai by email, according to the suit. It was only then, the lawsuit said, that her complaint was taken seriously and Brock had his hospital privileges suspended.
A Cedars-Sinai spokesperson told The Times in September that the hospital system had terminated clinical privileges for Brock following an investigation and reported the matter to the state medical board.
Brock, however, said he had surrendered his privileges without any “fact finding” or “hearing on the merits” of the allegations under investigation. In August, he had informed patients he would retire at the end of the month due to the “uncertainty of how long this process will take.”
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
