Dr. Xiao Di, who was employed by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (“CCF”), was a specialized neurosurgeon who pioneered the endoscopic repair of Arnold-Chiari malformations in the brain. In 2009, Dr. Di was featured by CCF in their year-end annual report as the only neurosurgeon in the world to have performed several variations of an endoscopic repair in the brain for various malformations and abnormalities. Dr. Di had a wide-reaching fan base of patients who had brain abnormalities repaired by endoscopic means, which utilizes very tiny openings in the skull rather than a large opening into the skull that traditional neurosurgery required. His social media accounts were swollen with past patients who espoused his surgical brilliance and patients hoping to be lucky enough to appear on his surgical schedule at CCF.

Unfortunately, Dr. Di suffered an eye injury during one of his endoscopic surgeries at CCF. Despite this, the eye injury could have been easily and successfully repaired by a simple cataract procedure. However, when Dr. Di underwent a cataract repair at CCF, the surgeon tasked with performing this operation on Dr. Di decided, on his own, to investigate and perform surgery on other areas of Dr. Di’s injured eye. In doing so, Dr. Di’s left eye became damaged beyond repair, rendering him unable to see out of his left eye. Dr. Di, with only “monocular vision,” meaning he could only see out of one eye, was forever unable to perform further surgery of any kind. Monocular vision results in a lack of depth perception, which any surgeon performing endoscopic procedures would need.

Despite Dr. Di’s previous success as a neurosurgeon at CCF, and despite the obvious negligence at the hands of the ophthalmologist at CCF who wrecked Dr. Di’s left eye, as well as his future surgical career, CCF elected to fight his case, wrongfully terminate Dr. Di from employment and attempt to negatively affect his career at every opportunity. After many years of hard-fought litigation, a jury verdict was rendered in favor of Dr. Di, and against CCF, in the amount of $7.7M. The majority of this award was for the future lost wages Dr. Di and his wife suffered as a result of the negligence and loss of vision in his left eye.