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NBC Universal has decided to settle a federal defamation lawsuit by a South Georgia gynecologist over TV coverage of allegations that he performed numerous unnecessary hysterectomies on women detainees at the Irwin County Detention Center during its use as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
According to documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, NBC Universal and Dr. Mahendra Amin, who practices in Ocilla and Douglas, have agreed to settle the lawsuit. Reportedly, both sides are now finalizing the settlement agreement. No details of the settlement have been released.
In 2020, a nurse from Tifton who worked at the Ocilla facility made a whistleblower complaint alleging that many female detainees were undergoing unnecessary hysterectomies. The whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, said the detainees referred to the doctor as "the uterus collector."
NBC-TV reporters interviewed the nurse and looked into the accusations. Several news shows on MSNBC-TV repeated the accusations. Amin, the obstetrician gynecologist who provided medical care to women detained at the Irwin County Detention Center, then sued for $10 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages.
The federal government ended the ICE contract with the Irwin County facility in 2021.
Allegations at the Irwin County Detention Center prompted an 18-month investigation by the U.S. Senate’s bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.
In November 2022, the subcommittee released its findings, among them that female detainees at the Irwin County Detention Center "appear to have been subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures," but that ICE approved Dr. Amin’s performance of OB-GYN procedures on a case-by-case basis and never identified any of the treatments as potentially excessive or unnecessary.
However, no mass hysterectomies were discovered. “The subcommittee found this allegation to be false, and ICE determined that the two hysterectomies Dr. Amin performed on ICDC detainees appeared to be medically necessary.”
Amin's lawsuit focuses on NBC's reporting of mass hysterectomies.
U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood last summer denied filings for summary judgments in the case and allowed it to proceed to trial, which was scheduled for April.
In her ruling, the judge said "Plaintiff has presented sufficient evidence that could enable a jury to find actual malice. A jury could also conclude that NBC did not act with actual malice given the evidence that it published opposing information. This duel of conflicting evidence must be resolved by a jury."
Judge Wood also wrote that "NBC found evidence that multiple women claimed to have received hysterectomies or other procedures. It also could not corroborate these claims, lacked medical records supporting the claims, and heard from multiple sources that only one hysterectomy could be confirmed. In the end, we are left with this: NBC investigated the whistleblower letter’s accusations; that investigation did not corroborate the accusations and even undermined some; NBC republished the letter’s accusations anyway. A jury could conclude that NBC did not act with actual malice because of its investigation. Or, it could conclude the opposite."
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