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An operating table with surgical instruments (symbol image)
Photo: Robert Poorten / IMAGO
The ex-managing director, who has already been sentenced to probation because of the hygiene scandal at the Mannheim University Hospital, is now faced with a lawsuit for damages.
His former employer demands 15 million euros from the ex-manager.
The district court of Mannheim confirmed a report by "Mannheimer Morgen" on the claim for damages.
According to earlier information from the clinic, reports of operations with contaminated cutlery had cost the university clinic reputation, patients and millions in revenue.
The ex-managing director was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence plus a fine in 2021 for violating the Medical Devices Act.
The Federal Court of Justice confirmed the verdict.
The start of the civil law proceedings has not yet been scheduled, since the deadline for submissions runs until April.
After the allegations became known, the clinic initially ruled out errors and deficits.
Later, when prosecutors went in and out of the building, journalists and the media were sometimes reproached with "misleading" and sometimes "incorrect and defamatory articles" in order to "put the clinic in a bad light."
Only long after the first reports did the clinic management admit in 2015 that there had been significantly more infections in the hospital than previously communicated.
Hospital staff should have pointed out problems long before public allegations were made.
Deficits in sterilization in particular are said to have been noted years earlier in a program for anonymous complaints.
svs/dpa