An unusual medical malpractice trial opens in a Miami court next week. A jury will have to decide whether an anesthesiologist can be held liable for a patient, Enrique Milla, losing his penis.
“At the end of the day, he has to sit down to pee through a tube” attorney Spencer Aronfeld explained. In 2007, according to records, Milla, then 60, chose to have elective surgery for an implant (a plastic straw) because of erectile dysfunction caused by diverse ailments.
“He didn’t do this to have a bigger penis,” Aronfeld said. “This was because of medical reasons: He just wanted to have relations with his wife.”
Two weeks after the surgery, however, a small infection turned into gangrene, and life-saving amputation became necessary. Aronfeld’s contention is that anesthesiologist Dr. Laurentiu Boeru should have known that Milla wasn’t in top physical shape at the time of the surgery and would have a HARD time (no pun intended) recovering.
“Mr. Milla had high diabetes and high blood pressure when they cleared him for surgery,” Aronfeld said. “They should postpone the surgery until he got better.”
Milla originally filed the lawsuit in 2009, naming Boeru and urologist Dr. Paul Perito, the penile implant expert who performed the surgery.
Court records show Perito settled with Milla last year, although the details of the deal aren’t publicly available. “What happened to Mr. Milla was just bad luck,” said Boeru’s attorney, Jay Chimpoulis. “But filing frivolous lawsuits won’t change his bad luck.”
