Judge rejects motion to move hepatitis outbreak trials out of Southern Nevada

Hang 'em from the Spaghetti Bowl. Flog 'em on Fremont Street. Grab the pitchforks and torches, and let’s get those monsters.

Comments like those on various local news Web sites exemplify public opinion toward Dr. Dipak Desai and others from the clinics blamed for last year’s hepatitis C outbreak, their lawyer said Tuesday in asking to move the upcoming civil trials to Carson City.

“Unbelievably derogatory statements, comparing them to Nazis, comparing them to Saddam Hussein, calling them monsters,” said David MacDonald, who represents the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, the Gastroenterology Center of Nevada, the Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center and a number of nurses.

Clinic lawyers wanted to move the first 22 civil trials related to the outbreak.

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed since the February 2008 announcement that 50,000 patients might have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV because of unsafe injection practices at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.

That number eventually grew to 60,000, and health officials have linked nine hepatitis C cases to that clinic and the Desert Shadow office. Another 105 cases are possibly related.

MacDonald said “sensational publicity” in Las Vegas has made it impossible for his clients to get a fair trial, because the jury pool has been “polluted.”

He cited a survey by David Graeven of San Francisco-based Trial Behavior Consulting Inc. that polled 400 Clark County residents and 404 Carson City residents.

The poll found about 82 percent of Southern Nevadans polled believed clinic staffers were negligent.

In Carson City, that number was 53 percent.

“The defendants have been vilified,” said MacDonald, who noted that clinic doctors have been unable to find work since the news broke.

In her arguments against moving the trial, lawyer Patti Wise said many of the sickly, elderly people suing the clinics could not spend a month in Carson City during the trial away from their doctors and medical treatments.

“To be saying it would be inconvenient for the plaintiffs is an understatement,” Wise said.

Moving the complex trials north also would overwhelm the Carson City court system, which has just two judges, she said.

As for the poll, Wise said even after excluding the large number of Clark County residents who might be biased against the doctors, the leftover jury pool would still dwarf the one in Carson City, which has less than 60,000 residents compared to Clark County’s nearly 2 million denizens.

At the end of the hearing, District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez denied the motion to move the trials. She said it was an issue that should be addressed on a case-by-case basis as each trial judge begins seating a jury.

Contact reporter Brian Haynes at bhaynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0281.