Malaysians, beware of unlicensed beauty doctors: Court awards RM800,000 compensation over PJ clinic’s botched breast fillers

 

The Sessions Court in KL noted that exemplary damages are meant to raise awareness to the public on the issues in a case. — Picture by Hari Anggara

• Sessions Court awarded RM800,000 in exemplary damages to a woman harmed by breast filler injections at an unlicensed Petaling Jaya beauty clinic, to deter unqualified doctors and clinics
• It said Malaysians should check if those giving them beauty treatments are actually doctors and whether they have Health Ministry-issued qualification to carry out aesthetic treatments
• It was also determined that consent form signed by patients are invalid, if the doctor did not tell the patient that they are not qualified to carry out the procedure

KUALA LUMPUR, July 30 — Malaysians should make sure to ask doctors if they have the Health Ministry’s licence to carry out aesthetic and beauty treatments on them, the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur has said in its RM800,000 decision over a breast filler injection procedure.

In this medical negligence case, Sessions Court judge Saifullah Bhatti ordered a doctor who did not have the licence, a Petaling Jaya beauty clinic found to be unlicensed, and the beauty clinic’s owner, to pay RM800,000 in exemplary damages to a woman over the injection of fillers into her breasts.

In this case, the woman — identified only as R for privacy purposes — had experienced pain and swelling after the breast filler injections in 2020. This resulted in her later visiting multiple other doctors, undergoing two MRI scans, and undergoing three surgeries in 2021 and 2024 to remove the fillers, as well as other treatments.

With the Sessions Court able to handle cases involving a maximum RM1 million amount, judge Saifullah yesterday said the compensation amount of RM800,000 would send a strong message to doctors in Malaysia to get their qualifications and only do medical procedures that are covered by their licences.

The Sessions Court noted that exemplary damages are meant to raise awareness to the public on the issues in a case, and to make an example out of those being sued and to deter them from repeating the same actions they were sued for.

The Sessions Court noted that the High Court had in another case in November 2024 awarded RM100,000 in exemplary damages to deter “beauty clinics which have mushroomed nationwide offering beauty aesthetics surgeries” from performing procedures that are not covered in their licences.

The Sessions Court said there is increasingly alarming news of more and more doctors being caught for performing procedures without licence: “In many cases around the world and not just in Malaysia, patients are sometimes left to die bleeding on the operating table.”

Even with the High Court having awarded RM100,000 in the 2024 case, there continues to be news of such rampant doctors, and the Sessions Court judge noted that the RM100,000 sum has not been potent enough to deter such doctors.

In Malaysia, the Health Ministry’s guidelines require doctors to get the ministry’s “Letter of Credentialling and Privileging” (LCP) or qualification before they can carry out aesthetic procedures — including breast filler injections — on patients.

In R’s case, the Sessions Court judge said the RM800,000 exemplary damages award was necessary to let Malaysians know they should check on doctors carrying out beauty treatments on them.

While anyone can be blamed for not asking basic questions “such as whether the person treating them is in the first place a doctor”, the Sessions Court judge said it is harder to expect the public to know that the doctor must also have an LCP to carry out the aesthetic procedure on them.

“As such, in deciding this case, and in granting exemplary damages, it is hoped that the general public is more aware of this issue and they should now be on notice to take all necessary precautions when consulting doctors for aesthetic procedures including asking all the right questions regarding your doctors qualifications – specifically whether they have the LCP,” the judge said in a 66-page judgment released yesterday.

The judge said the RM800,000 sum was justified as the case involves “public health and safety and holding recalcitrant doctors accountable to medical law, regulations and ethics”, and that it was a fair amount that should remind all doctors to get their qualifications and to stay within the limits of their certifications and their LCP.

In arriving at the RM800,000 figure, the judge had noted the facts where the doctor did not have an LCP; and that the doctor had failed the examination for the LCP but her “niat tertunda” or her intention to resit for the examination was postponed because of the movement control orders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The judge also noted that the doctor had taken her lack of the LCP more lightly than she should have as she tried to cite other inapplicable course certificates to insist she was qualified; and that the doctor had misrepresented to R that she would be injected with 100 per cent pure hyaluronic acid fillers but instead injected her with a filler which was lab-tested to be “primarily composed of silicone”.

The judge said the doctor had gone on to perform a drainage procedure on R without an LCP; and that the aesthetic centre and its owner had allowed the doctor to carry out those two procedures on R without an LCP; and that there was no proof that the aesthetic centre and its owner had Health Ministry-required licence to carry out the business. 

Ultimately, the Sessions Court awarded the woman R with compensation totalling RM919,009.60 in the form of RM800,000 exemplary damages, RM85,000 in general damages for her pain and suffering; and RM34,009.60 in special damages; and also awarded RM25,000 in costs to her.

What R’s lawsuit was about and what the court decided

In her lawsuit filed in April 2023 at the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur, the patient R had sued Dr S, the aesthetic centre’s owner SHA, and the aesthetic centre’s company F to claim for compensation.

R’s lawsuit claimed that Dr S was negligent by carrying out an aesthetic medical procedure without proper accreditation or licensing and failing to comply with the accepted standard of care by injecting the wrong filler into R’s breasts.

R claimed that the other two sued were negligent by appointing an unlicensed medical practitioner to perform the procedure and for failing to meet the appropriate standard of care that was expected of them as a medical facility.

The Sessions Court found Dr S to be negligent as she performed the procedure on R without the LCP accreditation, also noting that Dr S had failed to disclose to R that she was not legally qualified to perform the procedure.

Dr S was also found liable, as R would not have suffered the injuries if she had not used a filler that was later found to be primarily composed of silicone.

While Dr S claimed that R had accepted the risks by signing a consent form before the breast filler procedure, the Sessions Court said the patient could not have consented to what had happened to her as she had consented to a pure HA injection instead of a mainly-silicone injection.

“When a doctor performs a procedure without disclosing the fact they are not qualified (such as what happened in this case), any consent obtained under that present is invalid,” the judge said, having noted that a previous High Court decision had found that such failure would undermine a patient’s ability to make informed decisions about their treatment.

The Sessions Court also found SHA and F to be negligent, noting that the beauty clinic’s claimed Petaling Jaya City Council licence was irrelevant as it would only be a local authority’s permit to run a healthcare business and is not a valid Health Ministry-required permit to perform medical aesthetics procedures.

The Sessions Court said the man SHA is just as liable as Dr S as they were business partners; and the beauty clinic’s company F is a healthcare facility which had not shown any accreditation or licensing required under the Private Healthcare Facilities And Services Act 1998 and that it was not qualified to “play host to what was essentially an unlicensed and therefore illegal business”.

R was represented by lawyers Dayang Roziekah Ussin, Abu Daud Abd Rahim and Nik Amalia Suraya Nik Muhammad; while the three sued were represented by lawyer Fakhrul Azman Abu Hasan. - malaymail