The Votes Are In!
2023 Readers' Choice is back, bigger and better than ever!
View Winners → 
Health May 05, 2022
by
share with
Attorneys for the UC Regents and a UCLA doctor have filed new court papers denying any wrongdoing by their clients, who were sued by a man whose wife died in 2019 at age 33 of liver failure after allegedly being overprescribed a statin.
Plaintiff Ashley Steele’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit stems from the death of Maria Steele, a native of the Philippines who lived in Winnetka and went by her middle name, Isabella. The wrongful death suit alleges Dr. Patrick Yaffee did not warn her to be aware of side effects of Atorvastatin, a generic for Lipitor.
“Dr. Yaffee failed to instruct Isabella to stop taking Atorvastatin if she experienced muscle pain and weakness,” the suit says. “He failed to warn her that if she continued to take the drug after experiencing side effects that she was risking more serious injury, such as liver failure and death.”
But in a trial brief brought Monday, lawyers for the UC Regents and Dr. Patrick Yaffee say Lipitor was the most prescribed drug in the world in 2019, with 24.5 million people in the U.S. alone being taking the drug, or 7.5% of the population.
“There is no reported case of a fatal liver injury occurring in any patient taking Atorvastatin at any dose in a patient with no history of pre- existing liver disease,” the defense attorneys argue in their court papers. “This is true despite the fact that Atorvastatin and other statin drugs have been prescribed on literally millions of occasions throughout the world over the last two decades.”
The defense attorneys are requesting a special jury instruction regarding causation of the woman’s death “that is a clear and correct statement of the law, is not argumentative or misleading,” according to their court papers.
“The short time duration between initial ingestion of the drug and death may suggest to a lay jury a cause-and-effect relationship simply based upon this apparent temporal relationship,” the defense attorneys state in their court papers. “However, the link between the drug and the death, if any, is far more complex than this, as all experts will agree.”
The lawsuit, filed in May 2019, includes a photo of Ashley Steele and his late wife in evening clothes at an event. She is described in court papers as a healthy woman at the time who exercised regularly.
Isabella Steele saw Yaffee on Jan. 4, 2019, for an annual physical at UCLA Health Woodland Hills and was diagnosed after a blood test that showed higher than normal cholesterol levels, the suit states. Yaffee prescribed her a two-month supply of Atorvastatin at an 80-milligram dosage, the suit states.
“He did not disclose to Isabella that his dosage was between four and eight times higher than the starting dose recommended by the manufacturer,” which was 10 to 20 milligrams, the suit states.
By late January 2019, Isabella Steele complained of fatigue and other symptoms and said she was concerned they were related to her use of the drug, but Yaffee told her to keep taking the medication and arranged for her to see a cholesterol specialist on Feb. 6, the suit states.
Isabella Steele, meanwhile, contacted the UCLA Health Skirball Health Center and asked that a liver panel be performed, but her request was denied by the defendants, the suit states.
Three days later, she again requested a liver panel and Yaffee authorized the test, telling her via a voicemail afterward that the results showed “increased enzymes for liver probably related” to the drug, according to the suit, which says the doctor additionally told Steele to stop taking the medication and to see a cardiologist and cholesterol specialist.
On Jan. 29, 2019, Steele was so weak and in so much pain that her husband had to carry her to the emergency room, according to his court papers. She was later flown to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, placed in the cardiac care unit and put on the liver-transplant list, but died on Feb. 2, 2019, the suit states.
“Defendants utterly failed to meet the minimum standard of care, beginning with Dr. Yaffee’s interaction with Isabella at the physical,” the lawsuit alleges.
Had Yaffee taken an adequate history, he could have determined that she had been on a ketogenic diet for nearly a year and that the appropriate way to treat her elevated lipids would have been to change what she was eating, the suit states.
Trial of the suit is scheduled May 20.
