Thirty-three-year-old Erica Russell, a mother of five, left her home in Tennessee in 2021 to travel to Miami for a Brazilian butt lift, or BBL — the plastic surgery procedure that has one of the highest mortality rates.
“Like many folks across the country come to Florida and seek to have these plastic surgery procedures,” said Stephen Cain, a partner with the law firm Stewart Tilghman Fox Bianchi & Cain, who is representing Russell’s family.
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Russell had the popular plastic surgery at Seduction Cosmetic Center on SW 8th Street. State records show her surgeon, Dr. John Sampson, entered the operating room at about 6:32 that morning and performed six other surgeries before Russell's procedure, which began at about 8:31 in the evening.
“By the time he got around to our client, after 8:30 at night, he was now on his seventh procedure of the day,” Cain said.
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According to her autopsy, Russell died of fat emboli and internal bleeding after the doctor perforated organs during the liposuction portion of the surgery and then injected fat too deep into her buttocks, hitting the muscle — something that is prohibited by law because it has been shown to be the cause of most BBL deaths.
“She effectively bled to death along with having this emboli, this fatty emboli,” Cain said.
Russell's family is now suing Seduction Cosmetic Center and Dr. Sampson, alleging, among other things, that the center should not have let the doctor “perform an unsafe number of procedures in a single day," especially since state records had him as the “designated physician” for the center and not as a surgeon who would be performing BBLs.
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During a medical board hearing in 2022, NBC6 asked Dr. Sampson if he was pressured into doing that many surgeries in one day, but he didn’t answer. He ended up accepting a settlement from the state that prohibits him from doing BBLs again.
“Frankly, people expect better care in the United States in these procedures, and it’s care that they’re just not getting unfortunately at a lot of these facilities in Miami-Dade and Broward,” Cain said.
When asked about the lawsuit filed by Russell’s family, Dr. Sampson's legal representative told NBC6 he was “…unable to comment on active litigation.” A letter his previous attorney sent to the state says the doctor is “understandably upset by what happened in this case” and that “He has performed over 10,000 liposuction procedures, and approximately 7,500 BBLs in his practice, and this is the first time he has had any significant complication from either of these procedures, much less a patient death.”
Representatives for Seduction Cosmetic Center didn’t respond when NBC6 asked about this lawsuit.
According to the Russell family's attorney, they are filing this lawsuit to raise awareness and try to prevent this from happening to another family since recovering money is always difficult in these cases because many centers and doctors do not carry malpractice insurance.
