Foreign-born doctor loses his jury award

ERIE, Pa. (AP) -- A judge stripped an Egyptian-born doctor of a $750,000 jury award after ruling that he had improperly allowed jurors to consider the physician's allegation that he was fired by the state because he was foreign.
Judge Sean McLaughlin of U.S. District Court here ruled that Dr. Samir Moussa failed to present evidence that he was singled out by the state Department of Welfare because of his Egyptian heritage during a failed criminal investigation of patient abuse.
Judge McLaughlin also ordered a new trial in the federal lawsuit. Dr. Moussa vowed to appeal the ruling.
"Money is not everything. He cannot wipe away what the jury said," Dr. Moussa said.
A year ago, a federal jury found that state welfare officials had discriminated against Dr. Moussa in 1997 by firing him during an investigation of alleged patient abuse at the Polk Center, a state-run home for the developmentally disabled.
The investigation drew national attention after a news conference in which state Attorney General Mike Fisher waved a surgical stapler in the air and denounced the doctors, whom he accused of having abused developmentally disabled residents.
In December 1999, a Venango County judge dismissed the stapling charges against Dr. Moussa and three other doctors, saying they had used staple guns correctly to try to spare their often-combative patients pain by closing wounds quickly.
Dr. Moussa, who also lost his job at the Erie Veterans Affairs Medical Center, alleged he was treated differently than U.S.-born physicians who also stapled patients' wounds without anesthesia.
He suggested that a cover-up may have shielded those doctors from criminal charges.
State officials argued that Dr. Moussa's firing was dictated by state policies and that he was not singled out.
The physician eventually won back his job at Polk along with back pay.