Perwaiz Lawsuit at Maryview in Portsmouth: 1983 Firing and Williams Case

The Maryview Hospital Perwaiz lawsuit is a $5 million negligence case filed by former patient Toya Williams against Bon Secours Harbour View Surgery Center and Maryview Medical Center, alleging that the Portsmouth, Virginia hospital system credentialed Dr. Javaid Perwaiz and let him operate despite a disciplinary record stretching back to the 1980s, including Maryview’s own decision to terminate his privileges in 1983 for performing unnecessary hysterectomies. Perwaiz was convicted in 2020 of running a healthcare fraud scheme built on medically unjustified surgeries, and Williams’s suit is one of several civil actions holding the hospitals that credentialed him responsible for what patients endured.

Maryview’s Own 1983 Termination of Perwaiz

The Maryview facts sit at the center of the credentialing claim against Bon Secours. In 1983, Maryview Hospital terminated Perwaiz’s privileges after concluding he had performed unnecessary gynecological surgeries, specifically irreversible hysterectomies on roughly a dozen patients, several of them young women of childbearing age.¹ That termination is the earliest documented institutional finding that Perwaiz was operating on women who did not need surgery. It is also, according to the current lawsuit, information Bon Secours facilities either failed to weigh or actively minimized when they later granted him privileges.

A 2007 application Perwaiz submitted to work at a Bon Secours ambulatory surgery center allegedly concealed or downplayed his past misconduct, and the system credentialed him anyway.²

The $5 Million Williams Lawsuit

Toya Williams of Portsmouth is the named plaintiff in the active suit against Bon Secours. Her complaint alleges that in June 2019 Perwaiz performed an invasive and unnecessary surgery on her after falsely telling her she had cancerous and pre-cancerous cells. A later examination by an oncologist confirmed she had never had a malignancy. The suit says the procedure was carried out without her knowledge and consent.³

Williams is seeking $5 million in damages. Her attorney, Travis Markley of Trialhawk Litigation Group, has called the hospital’s credentialing of Perwaiz a “systemic failure,” arguing that Bon Secours should have accounted for his history of censure, license revocation, and malpractice claims at every credentialing stage from the 1980s through the 2010s. Plaintiff’s counsel planned to call credentialing experts at trial to testify about the system’s alleged failure to flag Perwaiz’s background.³

The case was set for an eight-day trial in Suffolk, Virginia, beginning in October 2024. Bon Secours had not publicly responded to the specific credentialing allegations as of the last available reporting.³

The Credentialing Record Bon Secours Allegedly Overlooked

Williams’s claim rests on a paper trail that plaintiffs say made Perwaiz’s pattern of practice knowable to any hospital doing careful credentialing work.

After Maryview terminated his privileges in 1983, the Virginia Board of Medicine censured Perwaiz in 1984 for poor recordkeeping and a sexual relationship with a patient.² He was convicted of felony tax fraud in 1995, and the Board revoked his medical license in April 1996. During a reinstatement hearing that June, a local OB/GYN presented evidence that roughly two-thirds of Perwaiz’s surgeries had been medically unnecessary, pointing to high rates of operations on young women with minimal health issues. The Board reinstated his license in July 1996 with conditions.¹

That is the record the Williams complaint says Bon Secours had a duty to weigh. Instead, plaintiffs allege, the system granted and renewed privileges that allowed Perwaiz to keep operating in its facilities into 2019.

What Perwaiz Was Doing in Those Operating Rooms

The nature of the underlying conduct matters to a credentialing suit because it defines the harm the hospital is alleged to have enabled. Federal prosecutors said Perwaiz’s scheme ran from at least 2010 through 2019 and involved pressuring women into invasive and often irreversible procedures by falsely telling them they had cancer or were at serious risk of developing it. The unnecessary operations included hysterectomies, ovary removals, and dilation-and-curettage surgeries. He also falsified pregnant patients’ due dates to induce labor early so deliveries would fall on days he had operating-room time, and he billed insurers for diagnostic procedures he never performed.⁴

A federal jury in the Eastern District of Virginia convicted Perwaiz on 52 counts of healthcare fraud and false statements on November 9, 2020. Senior U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith sentenced him on May 18, 2021, to 59 years in prison and ordered approximately $20.8 million in restitution to government and private insurers.⁵

The physical and psychological toll on his patients was extensive. Women who underwent unnecessary hysterectomies lost the ability to have children. Others experienced chronic incontinence and an inability to have sex. Many lived with the fear of a fabricated cancer diagnosis and endured repeated procedures they did not need. More than 60 victims testified at sentencing.⁶

The Earlier Bon Secours Surgery Center Settlement

Williams’s suit is not the first time Bon Secours has faced negligence claims tied to Perwaiz. A separate case involving a Bon Secours ambulatory surgery center was previously settled. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in that action argued that the center had kept Perwaiz on staff despite years of insufficient licensing paperwork in order to keep generating revenue.² Terms of that settlement were not disclosed in the available reporting.

How the Maryview Case Fits Into the Broader Perwaiz Litigation

The Bon Secours suit is one strand of civil and criminal litigation running in parallel, and the strands do not overlap. Perwaiz performed surgeries at two hospitals: Maryview, part of Bon Secours, and Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, which is not a Bon Secours facility. The largest civil case is against Chesapeake Regional, not Bon Secours. That suit, filed in Chesapeake Circuit Court in late December 2025, initially named more than 500 former patients as plaintiffs. By March 2026 the plaintiff count had grown to 907, each seeking $10 million in damages, with attorneys Victoria Wickman and Anthony DiPietro representing the group.⁷⁸

Chesapeake Regional also faces its own federal criminal indictment. On January 8, 2025, a federal grand jury indicted the hospital on two counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States and interfere with government functions, and healthcare fraud. Prosecutors allege the hospital received roughly $18.5 million in reimbursements for Perwaiz’s procedures between 2010 and 2019 and enabled his fraudulent practices for financial gain. CRMC pleaded not guilty and has called the indictment “excessive overreach.”¹⁹

Bon Secours and Maryview have not been named in the federal indictment or in the 907-plaintiff Chesapeake civil suit. The system’s exposure so far runs through the settled ambulatory surgery center case and the pending Williams action, both of which turn on the same core allegation: that decades of documented warning signs about Perwaiz should have been enough to keep him out of Bon Secours operating rooms.

1
U.S. Department of Justice. United States v. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center
2
Becker’s ASC Review. Bon Secours ASC Settles Virginia Negligence Suit
3
Yahoo News. Lawsuit Against Bon Secours Involving Javaid Perwaiz
4
U.S. Department of Justice. Jury Convicts Doctor in Scheme to Perform Unnecessary Surgeries on Women
5
U.S. Department of Justice. Former Chesapeake OBGYN Sentenced to 59 Years in Prison
6
FBI. Doctor Sentenced for Performing Unnecessary Surgeries
7
Virginia Business. 500 Sue Chesapeake Regional, Allege Negligence, Unnecessary Surgeries
8
WAVY News. Lawsuit Against Chesapeake Regional Medical Center Grows to 907 Plaintiffs
9
Virginia Lawyers Weekly. 500 Sue Chesapeake Regional, Allege Negligence, Unnecessary Surgeries