The Niche Weighs in on the Manhattan Stem Cell Clinic’s Answer to the AG’s Lawsuit, and Some Breaking News!
I represent the Manhattan stem cell doctor whom the NY AG has recently sued for false advertising and fraud.
Her is the NY Times story about the lawsuit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/health/stem-cells-lawsuit-new-york.html
I decided not to comment as part of the mass media’s coverage of the AG’s filing the lawsuit, because I needed to take a hard look at the complaint and think carefully about any response.
I did, and put together an Answer and Counterclaims. Here is my prior post which has the Answer and Counterclaims/
I’ve been in the law biz a long time, and hint, I helped make some of the law in the field of cutting-edge medicine, and even some of the law which could be directly applicable to this case. I don’t do predications on my own cases, but I do think my defense raises some important and interesting issues about, among other things, the suitability of a fraud and deceptive trade practice lawsuit when the alleged victims are patients who are required to receive informed consent. Are patients who received adequate informed consent victims? How about patients who have benefitted from the treatment and are happy with the results?
I also pointed out that many people take FDA-proven safe and effective treatments and die of their disease. Do they get a refund? Do patients have the right to use their own body parts for treatment of chronic conditions and incurable diseases? Who should control what kind of information patients and prospective patients receive from these medical practices for cutting-edge surgical based procedures?
Basic stem cell scientist and mega-stem cell blogger Paul Knoepfler, has just weighed-in on my Answer and Counterclaims. Here is his analysis:
https://ipscell.com/2019/05/ny-stem-cell-clinic-pushes-back-on-lawsuit-by-ag/
I take this guy very, very seriously.
I’m curious to hear what people who read my posts think about his analysis. In particluar, I’m interested about how different what the unproven private clinics are offering compared what I believe to what the equally unproven therapies the major hospitals are doing as discussed in my Answer. How much sense does it make medically speaking, to differentiate what the big places are doing from the smaller clinics? Do these distinctions only exist in the fantasy word of the FDA, versus the real medical world?
As is my wont, I’m going to mull over his analysis very carefully, and then I’m going to mull it over some more, and then probably make a substantive response to the Big Dawg, taking into account feedback from the professionals who follow both of us.
One piece of breaking news
Today, May 1st, the case was assigned to the highly regarded Commercial Division of the New York Supreme Court. The Commerical Division handles large dollar and especially significant lawsuits. It was the AG’s call to have the case assigned there, and I saw no reason to object.
The judge assigned is Judge Jennifer Schecter. She received some recent acclaim for telling Donald Trump that he’s not above the law, and allowed the defamation lawsuit filed against him by Sumer Zervos to proceed. Win, lose or draw, any state court judge who’s willing to put the head of the federal government in his place is ok by me. Should be really interesting. (If I were doing the screenplay, the twist would be that they actually met, not on the Apprentice, but in my client’s stem cell clinic waiting area; they both received complete informed consent and would testify at the trial for us, in a cross-over type episode/trial before the same judge. That won’t happen, but who knows what twists and turns there may be in this case.)
Stay Tuned!
Rick Jaffe
rickjaffeesquire@gmail.com