Nation watches as organ harvest case proceeds

Hootan Roozrokh, whose next court date in SLO is set for Feb. 27, is the first transplant doctor to be charged with hastening a potential donor's death

By Sarah Arnquist

December 30, 2007

San Luis Obispo County prosecutors set a national precedent last July when they charged a San Francisco transplant surgeon with three felonies alleging he attempted to hasten 25-year-old Ruben Navarro's death in order to harvest his organs.

The case made national headlines and alarmed the transplant community, which worried the negative publicity would have a chilling effect on organ donation.

Surgeon Hootan Roozrokh, 34, pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted of all charges, Roozrokh could face up to eight years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

Roozrokh has not spoken to the media. His attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach has said Roozrokh had nothing to do with the decision to end Navarro's life by taking him off life support. Moreover, he said, Navarro died eight hours after the surgeon left the hospital.

The criminal preliminary hearing is set to begin Feb. 27 and last several days. Deputy District Attorney Karen Gray said she plans to call seven to 10 witnesses but has not said who they are. The trial is expected to begin later in 2008.

Moving slowly through the civil courts is a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Rosa Navarro, Ruben Navarro's mother.

Rosa Navarro is seeking an unspecified amount in damages from the California Transplant Donor Network; transplant surgeons Roozrokh and Arturo Martinez; their employer, The Permanente Medical Group; Casa de Vida, the nursing home where Ruben Navarro lived; and San Luis Obispo doctor Laura Lubarsky, the Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center physician in the operating room.

Sierra Vista settled its suit this fall for $250,000.

Since childhood, Navarro had lived with a disabling neurological condition. On Jan. 29, 2006, he stopped breathing while at Casa de Vida in San Luis Obispo and was taken to Sierra Vista.

Doctors determined Navarro had suffered irreversible brain damage and would not live. He was identified as a possible organ donor, though one doctor wrote in his chart that he was a poor candidate for donation after cardiac death, the less common type of donation done on patients like Navarro, who are not yet legally brain dead.

Rosa Navarro consented to the donation, although her attorney has since argued that it was not informed consent because she was misled and cajoled into agreeing.

Sierra Vista had never done that type of donation before and now refers such cases to other hospitals.

Seeking immunity

For the past six months, attorneys in the civil and criminal cases have been wading through more than 4,000 pages of documents related to the case, including interview transcripts, medical records and organ donation protocols.

The criminal and civil cases rely mostly on the same witnesses, complicating the process. The judges are trying to balance Roozrokh's right to a fair and speedy criminal trial with Rosa Navarro's right to have her civil case move forward.

San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Barry LaBarbera ruled that Roozrokh could abstain from civil proceedings until further notice, but other defendants must continue to cooperate.

LaBarbera is also expected to rule soon on a request by Martinez, Roozrokh and the California Transplant Donor Network to dismiss Navarro's claims against them. The attorneys argued that their clients complied with the federal Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, thereby granting them immunity from any liability in the organ donation process.

The act regulates organ donation and procurement. It says that any health provider who acts in accordance with the legislation or attempts to do so in good faith "is not liable for that act in a civil action or criminal proceeding."

Navarro's attorney has argued the medical providers were not acting in "good faith." He said Rosa Navarro was misled and coerced into consenting to donate her son's organs, so the immunity clause does not apply.

Copyright © 2007 SanLuisObispo.com.

This article posted February 23, 2008.