Jefferson and former Rothman surgeon settle federal gender-bias lawsuit

A former Rothman Orthopaedic Institute surgeon and Thomas Jefferson University reached a settlement agreement in federal court on Wednesday, avoiding a new trial in a nationally watched gender discrimination case.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The settlement ends a yearslong legal saga in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia that began after John Abraham, an orthopedic oncology surgeon and a former Jefferson professor, sued the university over its investigation into rape allegations against him. He accused the university of conducting a gender-biased investigation and interfering with his financial contract with Rothman.

“The settlement is for all claims,” Abraham’s lawyer, Lane Jubb Jr., said Thursday. “I can’t comment on what it entails because it’s confidential.”

William Harvey, a lawyer for Jefferson, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

After a five-day trial in December 2023, a jury sided with Abraham and ordered Jefferson to pay him $15 million. At the time, the award was the largest-ever verdict under a federal law, known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.

Then in March, the judge voided the jury verdict and the multimillion-dollar award. U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson ordered a new trial, citing his own errors during the trial and inconsistencies in Abraham’s testimony.

Abraham is now suing Jefferson and a top professor and Rothman surgeon, James Purtill, for libel and slander. He filed the lawsuit last week in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, just ahead of Wednesday’s settlement conference before a new federal judge.

Jubb declined to say whether Abraham would continue with the pending lawsuit now that the federal case is over.

In the federal civil rights case, Abraham claimed Jefferson discriminated against him as a male during its investigation into a former medical resident’s allegations that he raped her during a 2018 pool party at his Main Line home. Abraham said Jefferson’s leadership ignored his assertion that the medical resident got him drunk and forced herself on him. They told him no one would believe that a woman forced her male supervisor to have sex, Abraham testified.

The university closed its Title IX investigation without a conclusive finding. Separately, Montgomery County prosecutors did not bring charges in a criminal investigation into the medical resident’s allegations.

Purtill, a partner at Rothman, served as the residency program director for both Jefferson and Rothman at the time of the June 2018 pool party. (Rothman and Jefferson are separate institutions, but they are academically and financially linked. They share office space, and Rothman’s doctors serve as faculty and supervising physicians at Jefferson.)

During the high-profile federal trial late last year, Purtill testified that he was “very concerned” that the medical resident didn’t consent to sex with Abraham.

Purtill also said he talked to new medical residents about the woman’s rape allegations after The Inquirer published a story about the case last May.

“Did it ever occur to you, sir, that it would be inappropriate to relay a one-sided version of events to those residents,” Jubb questioned Purtill during the trial’s third day.

Purtill did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

The newspaper detailed how leaders at Jefferson and Rothman had quietly brokered Abraham’s exit from Jefferson to avoid a Title IX sexual misconduct hearing.

Abraham resigned from Jefferson in early 2019. Rothman terminated his contract four years later, saying Abraham had failed to meet his financial obligations as a partner.