Cha vs. Flamm: The endless lawsuit

Written byBob Grant

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In yet another twist in an ongoing linkurl:legal battle,;https://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54035/ a Los Angeles Superior Court judge yesterday (Jan. 24) reinstated a linkurl:defamation lawsuit;https://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53709/ filed by Kwang Yul Cha, a fertility researcher who published a controversial 2001 linkurl:study;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11584476&dopt=AbstractPlus linking in vitro fertilization success to prayer. The judge reversed his decision to linkurl:throw out the case;https://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53876/ last November in response to a motion filed by University of California, Irvine professor Bruce Flamm, who has openly linkurl:criticized;https://www.obgynnews.com/article/PIIS0029743707702021/fulltext Cha's study since its publication. "The legal nightmare will now continue," Flamm wrote in an Email to __The Scientist__. Cha's privately owned healthcare group, CHA Health Systems, announced the judge's decision in a press release yesterday. "We're very pleased that the Court has reinstated Dr. Cha's claim," said Dr. Cha's attorney, Anthony Glassman, in the release. "We have always believed that the article was reasonably susceptible to a defamatory interpretation, and we look forward to letting a jury make that determination." Flamm, however, maintained that the lawsuit extends beyond the opinion piece at the root of Cha's lawsuit. "I am certain that this lawsuit is not really about defamation or the precise wording of one sentence in a brief opinion article," Flamm wrote. Instead, Flamm insisted, Cha's suit seeks to silence his criticism of Cha's "physic-defying 'miracle' study."

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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