NBC News has settled a $30 million defamation case with Dr. Mahendra Amin, an obstetrician-gynecologist based in Georgia. The case involved allegations of unnecessary procedures performed on female immigrants without their consent while in custody.

The case was set to go to trial on April 22 in a federal court in Waycross, Ga., but the two parties informed the court they had reached a settlement in February and were finalizing the agreement. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Amin dismissed the case on Friday, April 4, with the settlement terms not included in the public case record.

Neither NBC News nor MSNBC provided a comment to TVNewser at press time about the settlement.

Amin’s defamation case stems from an MSNBC report that aired in September 2020. The story focused on a whistleblower complaint that alleged the doctor performed two unnecessary and unauthorized hysterectomies on immigrant women at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Ocilla, Ga.  

Court records reveal that the medical records for both hysterectomy patients show ICE authorization, and the two patients also signed informed consent forms for their procedures. The NBC News report disputed that these women provided their informed consent.

Lisa Godbey Wood, the U.S. District Judge overseeing the case, found that NBC News did not provide evidence of Amin performing more than the two hysterectomies, but still published that “mass hysterectomies” were conducted by him and that detainees knew his as “the uterus collector.”  

“A jury could conclude that [Amin] performed unnecessary and unauthorized gynecological procedures, including the two hysterectomies,” Wood said in the order. “A jury could also conclude that these accusations were materially false.”