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K.Y. Cha's suit against Flamm tossed by Superior Court (again!)

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

K.Y. Cha's defamation suit against Bruce Flamm was dismissed on 21 April 2008. It had previously been dismissed, but then re-instated.

The following is a press release from Dr. Flamm:

COURT VINDICATES DOCTOR WHO QUESTIONED FERTILITY STUDY, THROWS OUT KWANG YUL CHA'S DEFAMATION LAWSUIT AGAINST BRUCE FLAMM

April 21, 2008--Los Angeles, CA -- In 2001, a study was published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine claiming that prayers from the USA, Canada, and Australia caused a 100% increase in pregnancy rates among infertility patients in Korea. The surprising results announced by Kwang Cha and associates were widely reported in the news media, including on the ABC news program Good Morning America. The following year, the study's credibility was undermined when one of the co-authors, Daniel Wirth, was arrested by the FBI and later pled guilty to fraud. Cha's other co-author, Columbia University's Rogerio Lobo, later revealed that he had not participated in the research and withdrew his name from the published findings.

Even with one of his co-authors in federal prison and the other disgraced, Korean fertility specialist Kwang Yul Cha stood by the supernatural study. He eventually filed a defamation lawsuit against Bruce Flamm, a California physician who had published several articles questioning the validity of the Cha/Wirth report. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in August 2007, was thrown out last November but reinstated in January. The lawsuit was dismissed today.

In response to the ruling, Dr. Flamm issued the following statement: "Today's ruling is a victory for science and freedom of speech. Scientists must be allowed to question bizarre claims and correct errors. Cha's mysterious study was designed and allegedly conducted by a man who turned out to be a criminal with a 20-year history of fraud. A criminal who steals the identities of dead children to obtain bank loans and passports is not a trustworthy source of research data. Cha could have simply admitted this obvious fact but instead he hired Beverly Hills lawyers to punish me for voicing my opinions."�

Dr. Flamm is a partner physician with Kaiser Permanente and a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California. He has been the senior investigator on numerous medical studies and has written several books and book chapters.

CIRM had given an entity, related to K.Y. Cha, a research grant, which grant was later not pursued.

***UPDATE

See Citizen Media Law Project

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).