MedStar Health, ex-physician sued amid sexual harassment accusations

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A former patient sued MedStar Health and a former rheumatologist in proposed class-action litigation accusing the medical organization of failing to act while the physician sexually harassed patients.

Filed Friday in U.S. District Court for Maryland, the complaint comes just over two months after James C. Roberson II was suspended from practicing medicine in the state.

An investigation by the Maryland Board of Physicians found that his interactions with several patients violated the board’s sexual misconduct regulations, constituting “immoral and unprofessional conduct,” according to the board’s suspension order.

Roberson, 63, could not be reached for comment, nor could an attorney who represented him during the board proceedings.

The lawsuit accuses MedStar of failing to monitor Roberson’s conduct and allowing him continued access to vulnerable patients. It brings six civil counts: negligence, negligent hiring, negligent supervision and retention, premises liability, vicarious liability, and concealment.

MedStar, which suspended and fired Roberson in 2024, said in a statement that Roberson’s “inappropriate personal conduct violated the foundational trust placed in him by his patients, by MedStar Health, and by the laws and ethics of his profession.”

“We’re grateful to those patients who came forward — we know it took a great deal of courage for them to do so,” the health care organization said, adding that it suspended Roberson “immediately” after hearing a patient’s concerns about his behavior, and fired him after an investigation. 

“We will never tolerate inappropriate behavior by our providers, and we will always act quickly to address any allegations of misconduct brought to our attention,” the statement says.

The plaintiffs are represented by a team of attorneys from Baltimore-based firms Brockstedt Mandalas Federico LLC and Keilty Bonadio.

One of the attorneys, Brockstedt partner Philip Federico, said that the size of the class of plaintiffs will depend on how the class is defined but estimated “certainly more than 100” patients could have claims.

The complaint says that the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit began treatment with Roberson in 2021 or 2022 at the orthopedic institute at MedStar Health Medical Center at Brandywine. At multiple appointments, she was allegedly subject to “inappropriate and repeated breast ‘exams’ without clinical indication; full-body massages with lotion; and inappropriate touching of the vaginal area under the guise of medical assessment.”

She initially believed the examinations were medically necessary, the complaint says, because she was seeking treatment for severe pain and distress from Sjögren’s syndrome.

“He was clearly doing it for self-pleasure,” Federico said. “It got to the point where he couldn’t restrain himself sexually; it went further and further until he was appropriately disciplined.”

The proposed class-action lawsuit alleges that MedStar was negligent and failed to act on “warning signs and red flags … indicative of immoral conduct.”

Among those signs was a 2018 advisory letter issued to Roberson by the state’s physician licensing board, which had investigated a patient’s complaint about an “inappropriate breast exam” he conducted without a chaperone in the room and warned him that such behavior could be construed as unprofessional conduct.

Federico, who has represented sexual abuse victims of Delaware pediatrician Earl Bradley and the Johns Hopkins Hospital gynecologist Nikita Levy in civil court, said that MedStar has so far been “very cooperative” with the civil attorneys’ investigation.

He said that he’s dealt with the organization “in the setting of typical medical malpractice” litigation and believes that it’s a “frontline corporate medical leader in our community.”

Roberson consented to have is Maryland medical license permanently revoked in January after the state physicians board made its findings last fall, which also resulted in Virginia revoking his license there.

MedStar had alerted the state physicians board in November 2024 that it had terminated Roberson after investigating a patient’s report that he “touched her inappropriately during a physical examination” and asked her if she would “mind if [he] gave her oral sex.”

Two other patients testified that Roberson conducted unusual breast examinations and made inappropriate comments. When interviewed under oath, Roberson denied those allegations but said he “lost his way” — he didn’t maintain appropriate boundaries, wrote “inappropriately flirtatious” emails to patients and engaged in romantic relationships with four patients. He testified that he “started to slip” in 2022 and his behavior progressively became worse until his termination.