Former patient speaks in surgeon’s defamation case

A former patient of Dr Munjed Al Muderis has given evidence in the Federal Court that the prominent surgeon did not tell her that a drill bit had been left in her leg when he performed surgery on her following a skiing accident.

Al Muderis is suing The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes for defamation over reports in September last year that he alleges convey a series of defamatory meanings, including that he negligently performed osseointegration surgery.

Leah Mooney and her husband Tim outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Friday.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Osseointegration involves inserting titanium pins into the residual bone of an amputee to enable prosthetic limbs to be connected.

Leah Mooney was not an osseointegration patient, but was called to give evidence by the Nine-owned media outlets in Sydney on Friday about two surgeries Al Muderis performed on her in Sydney in February 2011 after she badly broke her left leg during a skiing accident overseas.

Al Muderis’ barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, SC, put to Mooney during cross-examination that Al Muderis showed her X-rays following the first surgery, including showing her a “drill bit that had been broken off under the plate” inserted in her leg.

Mooney said she “never saw the X-rays” and she “never knew there was a drill bit in my leg at all”.

Dr Munjed Al Muderis pictured outside court last month.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Chrysanthou put to Mooney that Al Muderis told her that her leg was not straight following the first surgery “and he wished to do a revision surgery”.

“Yes, we had pointed out to him that it wasn’t straight, and he agreed with it and said that we’d have to do another operation,” Mooney said.

“What I want to suggest to you is he said you had two options, you could either leave the leg as it was, slightly not straight, or you could correct it by changing the plate that has been inserted [in the leg] into a nail instead,” Chrysanthou said.

“I think he probably would have told me that,” Mooney replied.

She said she did not recall Al Muderis telling her there were risks associated with a further surgery.

“He explained to you that it was up to you if you wished to proceed, and you decided to proceed,” Chrysanthou said.

“I don’t recall that because I was very upset about that. I was really quite devastated having to go to hospital again, but I didn’t feel I had any option,” Mooney replied.

After Chrysanthou suggested that Al Muderis did give her an option and she chose to have the revision surgery, Mooney replied: “In the end I chose that option, but I was upset about it.”

An orthopaedic surgeon who performed a later surgery on Mooney in September 2011, Dr Dimitri Papadimitriou, gave evidence on Thursday that he observed the drill bit had been left in Mooney’s knee during the initial surgery.

He said he told Mooney it was “OK that it was in there; that it hadn’t harmed her being in there” but he would need to remove it to treat an infection.

Mooney has given evidence that she did not learn about the drill bit until she had a conversation with Papadimitriou on September 1, 2011.

Chrysanthou said: “I want to suggest to you [that] you’re wrong about the conversation on 1 September being the first time you heard of the drill bit.”

“That’s not right,” Mooney replied.

Chrysanthou put to Mooney’s husband Tim, who gave evidence later on Friday, that Al Muderis had shown the couple the X-rays after the first surgery and “explained that in a second surgery he could remove the plate and put a nail in instead, and that would straighten the leg”.

“He showed us the X-rays beforehand and then afterwards he said that was his intention to remove the plate and insert the nail,” Tim Mooney said.

He rejected a suggestion that Al Muderis said the second surgery was optional.

“He said, ‘I must; this needs to be repaired.’ Leah was absolutely devastated. She just didn’t want to go through all that again,” he said. “It took a while to get her over the line.”

He said “there was no choice” and Al Muderis had suggested that “I can’t leave it like that; it has to be repaired”.

“He said, ‘It has to be fixed, I cannot leave it like that.’ He said, ‘My reputation depends on it.’ ”

“I want to suggest to you that he never said any such words,” Chrysanthou said.

“I suggest to you that I was there and I heard it, and that is definite,” Tim Mooney said.

Tim Mooney was shown a letter dated April 21, 2011, said to have been dictated by Al Muderis, in which the surgeon told Leah Mooney’s GP that he attended to Leah “with multiple surgeries”, with a “first stage” to stabilise the fracture and a second stage to “permanently fix the fracture”.

Dr Matt Collins, KC, acting for the media outlets, asked Tim Mooney whether this was a “correct statement of what Dr Al Muderis did”.

“No, there was no two stages. We were told that it would all be done in … the one operation,” Tim Mooney said. “There was no planned thing that he emphasises here. It is an absolute lie.”

Nine is seeking to rely on a range of defences, including a new public interest defence, truth, and honest opinion.

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