In August 2014, plaintiff Noushin Khoiny, an internal medicine medical resident in her 30s, was terminated from the three-year residency program at St. Mary Medical Center, in Long Beach, after her second year. She claimed that she was discriminated against because of her gender and retaliated against because she complained that she believed the hospital’s program was violating the accreditation counsel’s requirements. Khoiny sued St. Mary Medical Center; the operator of the hospital, Dignity Health; and several individual doctors and faculty in the hospital’s program. Khoiny alleged that the individual doctors and faculty defamed her. She also alleged that the actions of St. Mary Medical Center and Dignity Health constituted gender discrimination and whistleblower retaliation. The individual physicians and faculty members were dismissed from the case on motions for non-suit. The matter proceeded to trial against Dignity Health and St. Mary Medical Center, but the jury was hung and the matter was declared a mistrial. The matter was retried against Dignity Health only. During the retrial, Khoiny denied that she was performing poorly and claimed that an attending physician from the intensive care unit was critical of her because she was female. She also claimed that she was terminated from the hospital’s program in retaliation for complaining in writing that the hospital’s program was violating the duty hour requirements of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, an accreditation counsel. Dignity Health’s counsel argued that Khoiny was terminated because she was inefficient, slow and not performing in a satisfactory manner. Counsel contended that Khoiny was rated marginal after both her first and second years and that as a result, Khoiny was terminated during her third year. Defense counsel noted that the program was 40 percent female and had numerous females named chief residents and that five out of the 10 faculty attending physicians were also female. In addition, counsel argued that while Khoiny had a few duty hour violations, Khoiny had twice as many as all of the other residents in the rest of the program because Khoiny was unable to do her work in the time scheduled., Khoiny claimed that she cannot find employment and has to work part-time teaching nurse practitioners. As a result, she sought recovery of lost income based on the assumption that she would have been board certified in internal medicine, would have entered an allergy fellowship and would have become an allergist. In total, Khoiny sought recovery of $15.3 million in lost income up until she turns 67. Defense counsel argued that while Khoiny claimed that she was unable to obtain employment, another resident who was terminated one year after Khoiny was able to obtain other employment.