Boy awarded $1.2 million in botched circumcision mutilation lawsuit

Fox Television News and Associated Press. Thursday, 30 November 1995.

FOX TELEVISION NEWS AND ASSOCIATED PRESS, November 30, 1995.

NEW YORK (AP) – A clinic has agreed to pay $1.2 million to an 8-year-old immigrant boy who was mutilated during a botched circumcision five years ago, his lawyer said.

The settlement was reached a month after a civil trial began in state Supreme Court on allegations the boy, then 3, lost part of his penis during the operation, according to his attorney, Mark Pruzan.

The boy and his family, who asked that their names be withheld, are Russian immigrants who were referred to the Brook Plaza Surgical Ambulatory Center in Brooklyn by agencies that help new Jewish immigrants.

The clinic's attorney, Neil Ptashnik, was quoted in Wednesday's Daily News as saying that the settlement was a business decision that carried specifically no admission of guilt.

The boy was one of 16 children who underwent circumcision at the Brooklyn clinic in July 1990.

The clinic, a doctor and the rabbi who performed the operation were being sued for causing permanent shortening and disfigurement of the penis.

During the trial, experts testified that the mutilation would make sexual intercourse difficult when the boy reaches maturity, according to Wednesday's New York Post.

Under Jewish religious law, ritual circumcision — or bris — is performed on 8-day-old boys. But the procedure was not commonly available in the former Soviet Union. In addition, some Jewish families refrained from having their sons circumcised because it could make them targets of prejudice in communities where Jews were victims of anti-Semitism.

Citation:

Boy awarded $1.2 million in botched circumcision mutilation lawsuit. Fox Television News Associated Press. 1995-11-30

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