‘Uterus collector’ doctor sues news outlet in $30M defamation case
A doctor in Georgia is suing MSNBC, seeking $30 million for defamation after its popular TV news personalities—including Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace and Chris Hayes—referred to him as a “uterus collector” and made claims of extreme medical malpractice.
The plaintiff, Mahendra Ami, MD, worked at a Georgia-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, where he cared for female patients. Ami, a licensed and practicing gynecologist, was accused by a nurse at the facility of performing unnecessary hysterectomies in a whistleblower complaint.
This led to MSNBC publishing an initial article on Ami in 2020, basing their reporting on the nurse’s accusations. However, the outlet failed to properly verify whether the claims were true—an oversight that could rise to the level of “actual malice,” a judge wrote in a pretrial analysis of the case.
Ami and his legal team have denied the whistleblower’s claims, which they say have yet to be proven true. Further, they accused MSNBC of ignoring facts that contradicted many of the statements made by Ami’s accuser.
“NBC investigated the whistleblower letter's accusations; that investigation did not corroborate the accusations and even undermined some. Yet, NBC republished the letter's accusations anyway," Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District of Georgia wrote in her analysis.
Ami said the "false and defamatory" statements were made at least 23 times on various MSNBC news shows, with Wallace even saying the news of unwanted hysterectomies being performed had been “swirling around on social media” but was now “confirmed” as true by reporters.
The trial against MSNBC and its parent company begins on April 22.
For more, read a report from Fox News below.
Chad is an award-winning writer and editor with over 15 years of experience working in media. He has a decade-long professional background in healthcare, working as a writer and in public relations.