‘Reprehensible’: Judge orders plastic surgeon to pay $22.5 million for recording patients with surveillance cameras

An Ontario judge has ordered a Toronto-based plastic surgeon to pay $22.5 million to former patients after they were filmed without consent inside the clinic.Dr. Martin Jugenburg, also known as “Dr. 6ix” through his social media presence, had installed 24 surveillance cameras throughout his clinic at the Toronto Cosmetic Surgery Institute (TCSI), located inside the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in the city’s downtown. The cameras were placed including in corridors, reception spaces, staff rooms, consultation/injection rooms, operating rooms and post-operative recovery areas. This included areas where patients would routinely disrobe.“I find that Dr. Jugenburg knew exactly what he was doing and that it was wrong,” Justice Paul Schabas wrote in his ruling, which was released on Tuesday. With the exception of one obscured sign on shelf in the clinic operating room and another sign outside the clinic in an elevator lobby, at no point were the patients warned about the surveillance cameras. The class action suit against Dr. Jugenburg was brought forth after a December 2018 investigative piece into the TCSI’s surveillance cameras that aired on CBC Marketplace. The class covers all patients who attended the TCSI from Jan. 1, 2017 to Dec. 13, 2018, covering around 7,000 individuals.Out of the 12 patients who participated in the lawsuit, all but two of them testified that they were unaware of the surveillance cameras until the CBC Marketplace investigation. The patients described their feelings as “violated,” “humiliated,” “shocked,” “betrayed” and “distressed not knowing where videos or pictures would have ended up.” The plaintiffs also called up hospital administrators to testify that it is standard practice to only install cameras in public areas with clear signage and keep them out of examination rooms and other areas that require patient privacy.In his defence, Dr. Jugenburg argued he made a “genuine mistake” in believing that as long as he kept the footage strictly secure and did not disclose it to third parties, the surveillance was not unlawful. He argued the cameras were necessary for security and that they did not constitute a breach, given that only he and his medical staff within a “shared zone of privacy” had access to the footage. Dr. Jugenburg’s counsel also submitted that the “overwhelming majority” of the footage was never watched, and that the cameras “were largely capturing the exact same visual information that patients had already voluntarily disclosed to the clinic and recorded in their charts.”After the CBC Marketplace piece aired, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario investigated the clinic and disabled the surveillance system. In 2021, the college suspended Dr. Jugenburg’s certificate of registration for six months for the surveillance cameras (as well as permitting a TV crew to film a patient’s procedure without consent and posting images of another patient on his social media accounts).Justice Schabas called Dr. Jugenburg’s conduct “reprehensible” and rejected the surgeon’s claim that they were needed for security.“He abused his position of trust and betrayed his vulnerable patients from whom he was profiting. He installed surveillance cameras in very private places for his own benefit,” the judge wrote. “When the camera system was exposed, Dr. Jugenburg disingenuously claimed they were for security, and showed no remorse for his conduct.”The aggregate damages ordered by the court have been set at $21.5 million, with an additional $1 million for punitive damages. Out of the $21.5 million for aggregate damages, an estimated 4,000 patients who attended surgical appointments will be awarded $5,000 per person, while around 3,000 class members who only attended non-surgical or injectable appointments will be entitled to $500 per person.

‘Reprehensible’: Judge orders plastic surgeon to pay $22.5 million for recording patients with surveillance cameras

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