Family wants change after doctor with troubled history botched son's circumcision

WARNING: Some of the details of this story could be upsetting to some readers.

A family is calling for change after winning a lawsuit against a South Florida doctor they say mutilated their infant son.

“If the system had not been so broken, this would have never happened,” said the boy’s father, Michael Lubben.

That’s because that doctor, Berto Lopez, had learned his license was being revoked 10 days before he performed a circumcision on the Lubben’s son.

“We tried to do everything right, but it felt like in this case we had failed our son,” Lubben said.

Michael believes the way Florida regulates doctors operating in the state failed his son and puts patients at risk.

His son Gabriel was born on February 5, 2021, perfectly healthy, according to his father.

“We had gone to a birthing center instead of a hospital because during Covid, I wasn’t allowed to be in the hospitals with my wife,” he explained, adding their midwife recommended Dr. Berto Lopez to circumcise their son. The family set an appointment for February 15th when Gabriel was ten days old.

But once Lopez began the procedure at his then West Palm Beach practice, Michael said he immediately sensed things were not going well.

“I felt like something was wrong because there was so much blood,” he said, “I couldn’t even recognize what was going on.”

Michael said he watched helplessly as the doctor tried to stop the bleeding for 45 minutes, without success.

“Gabriel was screaming the whole time, he was obviously in a lot of pain,” Michael said.

He said Lopez eventually left and sent them home. According to a lawsuit filed by the family, it wasn’t until visiting another doctor, they learned what exactly went wrong.

“In addition to cutting off the foreskin, he had also cut off over 50% of the head of the penis and that tissue was lost,” he said, “He just threw away the tissue and then he tried to cover it up.”

Making matters worse, Michael said a urologist later told the family the damage could have been repaired if they had known what happened and saved the tissue.

But what they learned next left them questioning how Lopez was even allowed to treat their son that day.

“I found out that his license had been revoked,” Michael said, “It was a tough thing to discover.”

Just ten days earlier, the same day Gabriel was born, Florida’s Board of Medicine voted to revoke Lopez’ medical license. But the final order was not filed until February 23, more than two weeks after the revocation and Gabriel’s procedure.

“They allowed him to slip through on a technicality,” said attorney Gary Cohen. He represented the Lubben family in a civil lawsuit against Dr. Lopez.

Cohen said Lopez knew his license was being pulled when he circumcised the Lubben’s son.

“He absolutely was aware because I was at the hearing. He was at the hearing. His lawyer was at the hearing,” Cohen said.

Cohen attended the disciplinary hearing on behalf of another patient, Onystei Castillo-Lopez.

According to state records, the pregnant wife and mother to a young daughter, unnecessarily bled to death in the hours after Lopez delivered her second child, a baby boy.

“There’s a picture of her actually holding the baby,” Cohen said, “And then she started to bleed.”

An administrative complaint from the Florida Department of Health outlines a domino effect of substandard care, saying the doctor delayed taking Ms. Castillo-Lopez into the operating room as she continued to bleed. According to state records, he left the hospital after he tried unsuccessfully to fix the problem and even though she was still bleeding. During the investigation, the doctor claimed he left because his scrubs were contaminated with blood.

“He went home, and she died,” Cohen said.

That was in 2017. At the time, Lopez’ license was already restricted, preventing him from doing surgeries without supervision. That discipline was the result of similar complaints involving the death of a different young mother, and injury to another. In a video deposition, Lopez spoke about the agreement he made with the state after those incidents.

“I chose to accept their terms while not agreeing or admitting to liability or denying liability,” Lopez stated in the recording.

But even with a restricted license, Lopez botched the circumcision of yet another baby in April of 2017, according to a suit filed by the boy’s family.

It alleges a doctor who evaluated the infant after the procedure was unable to identify any normal anatomy and concluded a significant part of his penis had been amputated.

That case ended up with a settlement.

“He should never have touched another patient and yet he did with this little boy,” Cohen said, “This should have been stopped years earlier.”

NBC6 Investigates found it’s one of more than a dozen documented injuries and deaths to women and babies. Many of those detailed in lawsuits naming Lopez alleging malpractice, and previously reported by the Palm Beach Post.

Some of the cases date as far back as the 1990s, so long ago, detailed records no longer exist. We reached out to Lopez to see if he would speak with us about the revocation and complaints. We got one word in response, no.

“It still took several years for his license to be revoked,” Michael said, “To anyone with human blood in their veins, that’s wrong.”

Michael says despite Lopez’ troubling track record, it’s not easy to find or even know about complaints against doctors until too much time has passed.

NBC6 Investigates asked the Florida Department of Health about the concerns over a lack of transparency and the lengthy administrative process to discipline doctors. A spokesperson told us the process could only be changed through legislation.

It’s not a comforting message to Gabriel’s father.

“I would like them to understand how helpless people like me are in these situations,” Michael said, “I was doing the best I could as a parent.”

After reading all of this, you may be wondering what’s being done to protect patients. A decade ago, Florida passed legislation to hold dangerous doctors accountable.

“In 2004, a constitutional amendment was passed here in Florida by 71% of Floridians who voted,” Cohen explained.

The goal of Amendment 8 was to revoke the license of doctors with a troubled history, but for that to happen, it must be determined the doctor committed three or more incidents of medical malpractice. The statute says, “repeated medical malpractice” needs to be based upon “clear and convincing evidence.” The law states malpractice can be determined in a final court judgment, final administrative agency decision, or decision of binding arbitration. But many malpractice lawsuits are settled out of court, allowing doctors to avoid admissions of liability.

Cohen argues the language of the law that eventually became state statute, makes it difficult to enforce. He says he is not aware of any doctors with strikes on their record.

“I’m aware that even Berto Lopez didn't have any strikes on his record when they took his license away,” he said.

When asked about enforcing that law, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health was initially unfamiliar with it and has not yet provided any information regarding how many times, if any, the law has been used.

NBC6 also reached out to the then-Chair of Florida’s Board of Medicine at the time Lopez’ license was revoked, Dr. Zachariah Zachariah. He said he did not recall Lopez’ case specifically but said the board takes these issues seriously when they review a doctor’s behavior.

“This system is still in place and it’s so broken and it’s wounding families,” Michael said.

His son is now three years old. Healthy and happy, and yet to understand the impact of his injury.

“He's growing up with something that he has to live with for the rest of his life,” Michael said.

In August, a jury in the Lubben’s civil suit against Lopez awarded the family $100 million in damages. It’s an outcome they hope calls attention to a system they believe fails patients.

“Not just causing irreparable damage in people’s lives,” Michael said, “But actually taking lives.”