Plastic Surgeon Not Liable for Death, Lawyer Says

The death of a La Habra woman after more than 10 hours of liposuction and plastic surgery is tragic, but the Irvine surgeon who operated is wrongly being held responsible, said the attorney for Dr. William Earle Matory Jr.

An Orange County Superior Court commissioner on May 5 temporarily suspended the licenses of Matory and anesthesiologist Dr. Robert Ken Hoo.

“The single loss of a patient is heartbreaking but should not result in the career-threatening barrage of inaccurate accusations we are confronted with here,” attorney Lloyd Charton said.

The state medical board, however, called Matory’s behavior negligent in the extreme.

“From the beginning [Matory] was careless toward this patient,” the board said in its petition to suspend his license.

“To plan such a prolonged, traumatic and invasive procedure as outpatient surgery was an extreme departure and demonstrated a lack of knowledge or ability in carrying out his responsibilities as a surgeon.”

Judy Fernandez, 47, died March 17 after surgery in Matory’s Irvine office.

At a press conference in his Santa Ana office, Charton held up the doctor’s medical credentials to deny that he was incompetent.

In 20 years of practice Matory has performed more than 20,000 plastic surgeries, Charton said.

Charton said Matory will ask the court to give him back his license today.

Charton said it was not Matory’s responsibility to monitor Fernandez’s vital signs and that the job belongs to the anesthesiologist.

Matory, Charton said, was not warned about Fernandez’s deteriorating condition while he was operating and did not observe problems with her vital signs.

Gil Jones, Hoo’s attorney, declined to comment.

Robert Hartmann, the attorney for Fernandez’s husband, Ruben, said evidence the medical board presented did not support Charton.

“The facts were submitted to the commissioner, who then suspended these people’s licenses,” Hartmann said. “That ought to be a indication of the truthfulness of those statements.”