A federal jury in St. Louis has awarded more than $6.8 million in damages to a urologist who claimed a local health system retaliated against her for complaining about the workplace.

In a 2024 lawsuit against SSM Health — a nonprofit, Catholic healthcare network — and the affiliated Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Deborah La Scola, MD, claimed she was fired after complaining about gender-based discrimination and harassment.

The jury awarded La Scola $793,000 for lost wages, $5.75 million for punitive damages, and $285,500 for other damages.

Her victory was not total. The jury and the judge separately rejected other claims she lodged about a hostile work environment and unequal pay. In addition, La Scola seemed likely to be denied much of the damages because of limits set by federal law.

In a statement, Matt Wagner, a spokesman for SSM Health, noted that “eight of the plaintiff’s nine claims were dismissed, and we demonstrated throughout the proceeding that her compensation and employment decisions were made for legitimate, nondiscriminatory, and nonretaliatory reasons.”

Attorneys for La Scola didn’t respond to requests for comment from Medscape Medical News.

A Brief and Outspoken Stint as Urologist

According to the lawsuit, La Scola worked for SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital-Lake St. Louis in Lake St. Louis, Missouri, from 2019 to 2022, starting at an annual salary of $400,000.

In a filing, La Scola claimed the defendants paid her “significantly less than her male counterpart for performing the same work, ignored her repeated complaints of gender-based pay inequity, and then terminated her when those complaints — and her patient safety concerns — became inconvenient.”

In 2022, her base compensation was raised to $575,000, $50,000 less than a male colleague, “despite their shared responsibilities operating the same urology clinic,” the filing states. That colleague and other male co-workers got additional incentive pay while she did not, La Scola claimed.

Inside Claims of Medical Error and Harassment

In regard to patient safety, La Scola alleged that she asked the colleague to check on urine test results for a patient when she was out of town and confirm the patient was taking the correct antibiotic.

The colleague, she claimed, didn’t follow up, and SSM Health staff failed to later replace the antibiotic as she requested, preferring the colleague’s preferred drug. The patient died of sepsis.

She also alleged that the colleague berated her in an operating room with “vulgar language and falsely accusing her of breaking instruments.” And, she claimed, the colleague “lodged unfounded complaints against [her] and raised meritless concerns.”

She made multiple complaints about him in turn, accusing him of carelessly disposing of sharps and cancelling “surgical cases with only one day notice.”

Doctor Said She Was Accused of Being ‘Nitpicky’

According to La Scola, she demanded that SSM Health “put a stop to the bullying.” She also wrote that she filed a formal report about the patient’s death herself after learning no action had been taken.

La Scola claimed that as a response, she was “accused of being nitpicky and informed her standards are too high.” Later in September 2022, the claim said, she was fired without cause.

After she lost her job, the suit said she was “blackball[ed]” by SSM Health. She couldn’t find a job in the metropolitan St. Louis area, and “had to accept employment in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, at a significantly lower rate of pay,” according to court records.

The colleague continues to be listed as an SSM Health employee. Both La Scola and the colleague are listed as having Missouri physician licenses in good standing without previous disciplinary actions.

Did ‘Gender Pay Parity’ Claim Refer to Discrimination?

In a legal filing, SSM Health and Saint Louis University claim that La Scola was “terminated after a series of events completely unrelated to her sex.”

She refused to take equal practice call to the male colleague, who asked that their practices be separated, the filing says. The director who oversaw her department said La Scola was “creating a hostile work environment,” and a human resources employee found she “lacked the self-awareness to see how her behavior was causing challenges within the office.”

Ultimately, the filing says, La Scola was fired because her relationship with the colleague had “deteriorated to a point where there was no path forward for them,” and she was not considered “a viable partner for anyone at the Lake St. Louis hospital.”

And while she told staff that she wanted to reach “gender pay parity” with her colleague, the legal filing says an administrator “testified that he did not take plaintiff’s comment regarding gender pay parity to be a complaint of discrimination.”

The filing says she later agreed to a higher salary of $575,000.

Big Damages Could Dwindle

In its statement, SSM Health notes that “federal law caps compensatory and punitive damages. In other words, the final award amount will be significantly smaller and determined only after posttrial motions and any appeal are resolved.”

Indeed, these damages in employer discrimination cases are limited to $300,000 for employers with more than 500 employees, such as SSM Health.

While federal judges have knocked down high damages in similar cases due to the limit, there’s a dispute over the cap in retaliation lawsuits.

Those quoted in this story reported having no disclosures.