Left: Dr. Louis Kwong in sheriff’s uniform at the hospital (from the plaintiffs’ lawyer); Center: Kwong’s portrait photo from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center; Right: Kwong (l) in the operating room (from the plaintiffs’ lawyer)
A California trauma surgeon is facing allegations of sexual misconduct on unconscious patients, including claims he checked ‘under the hood’ of one Black male he was treating, according to two lawsuits alleging a racial, sexual and antisemitic atmosphere at a Los Angeles hospital.
Dr. Louis Kwong is no longer an employee of LA County, where he worked as an orthopedic surgeon at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, county officials confirmed in a statement emailed to Law&Crime on Tuesday.
“Harbor-UCLA has zero tolerance for misconduct of any kind by members of our staff, and we have established clear channels for reporting allegations of misconduct so they can be thoroughly investigated,” the statement read, without elaborating on Kwong, citing personnel matters and ongoing litigation. “When substantiated, corrective action is initiated. We wish to express our gratitude to those who utilized this process to bring their concerns to our attention.”
Citing a discharge notice, the Los Angeles Times reported that Dr. Kwong was terminated.
“Your inappropriate, disparaging comments and actions were offensive, and created an uncomfortable, hostile, and demoralizing work environment for others,” Griselda Gutierrez, the hospital’s chief medical officer, wrote in the notice, The Times reported.
Kwong’s attorney told The Times he’s appealing his discharge with the County’s Civil Service Commission.
“Dr. Kwong disagrees with the County’s decision to terminate his employment and denies the manufactured allegations against him,” attorney Michelle Ferber told Law&Crime in an email. “Dr. Kwong looks forward to defeating these sensationalized claims through the appeals process, not in the press.”
Kwong faces two lawsuits by three former female doctors, who experienced “horrors perpetrated by a powerful man, one whose actions were protected for more than a decade by the highest levels of County hospital leadership,” lawyer Carol Gillam, who is representing all three women, said in a statement to Law&Crime. “No longer can Kwong threaten the careers of young resident doctors and medical students who might speak out about what happened inside his operating rooms. We will not rest until all are held accountable.”
The doctors alleged a culture of harassment against women, denials of promotions and appointments, reassignments, and vastly less pay than their male counterparts in orthopedics, court documents said.
One woman witnessed “constant racial, misogynistic, and homophobic comments and behavior,” court documents said. “She observed firsthand the retribution meted out by Kwong against those who didn’t silently obey him, and then it happened to her.”
One doctor said her academic appointment to UCLA was put “on hold” under Kwong and that she was removed from her position as the orthopedic surgery residency associate program director after administrators asked her to investigate a report that Kwong endangered a patient by watching a baseball game on the operating room monitors while operating on a patient, in what court documents call “the Baseball Incident.”
When she came back from her maternity leave, she claimed that her office was locked, her locks were changed, her stuff was put into storage, and she was made to share a cold converted closet next to a noisy bathroom with no thermostat and only one computer.
The court papers claim that Kwong — a reserve LA County Sheriff’s deputy, received a nearly $1 million salary for over 1 1/2 years while on administrative leave.
The legal case, which also involves LA County and the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the Harbor UCLA Hospital, claims that complaints were made to management about him, “yet they let the unsafe environment persist for patients, residents and faculty.”
The lawsuit claims gender, family responsibilities and pregnancy discrimination, wage theft, whistleblower retaliation, hostile work environment harassment, breach of contract and other complaints. It seeks over $50,000.
The lawsuit alleges that male doctors made vulgar remarks about female doctors, patients, and others. At one point, when the hospital’s CEO told Kwong not to comment about female colleagues’ looks, Kwong reportedly angrily told his colleague that the CEO was a “weak leader.” Kwong also reportedly said at one point, men are either “‘t— or a–‘ guys” and that “people think Asian men have small d—-.”
Kwong reportedly engaged in other incidents, including lifting the drape of an anesthetized patient to look at his penis after being told it was large, according to the lawsuit. Kwong reportedly measured the penis size of patients using paper rulers and asked a medical student and a resident to guess whether a man’s penis was over or under the length of the paper ruler, court documents said.
In an incident reported in 2019, Kwong allegedly lifted surgical gowns to “check under the hood” to view the size of an unconscious Black man’s penis he had been told was large, the lawsuit claims.
Referring to his discharge notice, The Times said he reportedly discussed the “genitals of the day.”
Kwong once talked about how he “‘cut his ex-wife’s vagina’ to get his baby out,” encouraged residents to marry his ex-wife and offered $100,000 to anyone who married her so he did not have to pay her alimony, court documents said. Kwong also reportedly discussed “autoerotic asphyxiation” and discussed sex acts during surgeries, court documents said. During a lecture for medical students and residents, he used depictions and diagrams of males and females to demonstrate sexual positions to use after hip replacement surgery, the lawsuit claims.
“The atmosphere was more like a men’s locker room than a formal education session,” court documents said.
The lawsuit claims that Kwong was once reportedly so intoxicated he had to be removed from the operating room. He was also a reserve LA County Sheriff’s deputy and reportedly carried a gun in a fanny pack in the operating room, the clinic, the office and conference rooms.
“His anger, weapons and intolerance of any criticism made staff worry about their safety,” the lawsuit claims. “One male attending said he seriously considered getting bulletproof glass put on his car and wearing a bulletproof vest to work because of Kwong.”
In the second legal case, a former employee claims that she was taken out of her role as program director right after raising concerns about the safety of residents, faculty, and patients.
The lawsuit stated that the work environment for female doctors at Harbor has become unbearable. While many women had leadership positions at Harbor until recently, the administration decided that there were not enough men in leadership roles and deliberately removed a significant number of them in 2023.
According to the lawsuit, the hospital’s program director of emergency medicine asserts that she was demoted and replaced by a much younger, far less experienced man because she was told that they had to give a talented guy a chance before she turns into a pumpkin.