The hall of lost steps at the Palace of Justice in Beirut. (Credit: Claude Assaf/L'Orient-le Jour)
BEIRUT — The sole criminal judge of Beirut, Tanios Hayek, held a hearing Thursday in a case brought by Fawzi Mechleb against several doctors involved in a 2016 surgery on his one-year-old daughter, Sophie Mechleb, which left her paralyzed with severe brain damage.
The lawsuit, filed in 2017 under Article 565 of the Penal Code ('unintentional injuries'), targets the surgeon who performed the operation, along with three other doctors: an assistant, an anesthetist, and an intensive care specialist.
As one of the defendants has since died, Mechleb’s lawyers requested time to amend the case by identifying and summoning the deceased doctor’s heirs. The next hearing was set for Oct. 1.
Separately, two doctors have already been convicted of issuing false certificates and giving misleading testimony about the circumstances that led to Sophie’s injuries. On April 30, the Metn Court of Appeal ordered Claude Semaan to pay one billion Lebanese lira (around $11,000) in damages to the family.
Earlier, in October 2025, another ruling ordered pediatric neurologist Ghassan Mhaimes to pay 200 million lira (about $2,230).
“The key point is the conviction itself,” said the family’s lawyer, Georges Khoury, emphasizing that legal accountability matters more than the amount of compensation.
