“I will not allow them to humiliate me. It is with these words transmitted by his lawyer that a man announced his desire to appeal. On Wednesday, the administrative court had however ruled in favor of this 38-year-old man who accuses the Nantes University Hospital of faults having led to the total removal of his penis. The sum of 61,000 euros allocated by the courts is however far from the expectations of the victim and his lawyer, who claimed a total sum of 976,000 euros in compensation for the damage suffered.
“We are appealing and we will win,” the victim said. Referring to the “social death” of his client, the lawyer, Me Georges Parastatis, declared: “This man suffered a first psychological death by medical malpractice and a second today by this denigrating judgment for human dignity. The administrative court found the CHU guilty of “wrongful breaches” having led to “a total removal of the penis” of the patient.
Supported for a form of cancer
Supported in 2014, the then 30-year-old man had undergone a first surgery following a diagnosis of carcinoma (a type of cancer). The CHU’s error caused the patient to lose “70% chance of avoiding recurrence [du carcinome] having led to a total removal “of the patient’s sex during new operations from 2014 to 2017.
The sum of 61,000 euros was assessed on the basis of three different damages: the suffering endured (12,000 euros), the permanent functional deficit (16,000 euros) as well as the sexual damage (31,500 euros). The victim’s lawyer deplores that, in the judgment rendered on Wednesday, the “physical and psychological suffering” was taken into account for the compensation requested “only within a strict framework of nomenclatures pre-established by enarques”.