Three years ago, a former UC San Diego oncologist who accused the university of retaliation won a $39 million jury verdict, but an appellate court balked at the amount. Now, the parties have reached a multimillion-dollar resolution.

The 4th District Court of Appeals, Division 1 in September upheld the verdict but found that the amount the San Diego Superior Court jury awarded Dr. Kevin Murphy for past noneconomic damages — subjective matters such as emotional distress — was more than the court’s scrutiny of the record could justify. The appeals court wanted $12 million shaved from the total.

“While the amount of damages sought by a plaintiff does not create a cap on what a jury can award, it does signal a need for the court — both trial and appellate — to scrutinize the record for evidence that would justify such an enhanced award, as well as any indication that the jury might have been motivated by passion and prejudice,” reads the unanimous Sept. 10 opinion from Associate Justice William Dato.

Here, the court wrote, after giving Murphy “the benefit of every reasonable inference the jury could have drawn, we cannot find a basis for an award of $20 million in past noneconomic damages.”

In 2023, a trial jury awarded Murphy, who also taught at the university, $39.5 million in total in his fight with UC Regents, which oversees UC San Diego. Of that, $20 million was to cover past noneconomic damages, which was more than six times the $3.2 million amount he’d sought on that...

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