Published: 7:33pm, 24 Jul 2025Updated: 9:32pm, 24 Jul 2025
A Hong Kong doctor involved in a fatal liposuction procedure in a beauty centre in 2014 has won an appeal against her manslaughter conviction.
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The Court of Appeal on Thursday cleared Dr Vanessa Kwan Hau-chi of the charge and set aside her six-year jail sentence, after her lawyer argued that the trial judge, in her instructions to the jury, failed to highlight uncertainties over the cause of the patient’s death.
The Department of Justice said it would study the ruling before deciding whether an application for a retrial was necessary.
The 42-year-old defendant was accused of breaching her duty of care to dance instructor Josephine Lee Kar-ying, who underwent her second liposuction procedure to have fat on her back removed at the Regrowth Hair Transplant Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui on June 26, 2014.
Kwan was banned from practice indefinitely by the Medical Council following the incident.
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Lee, who weighed 113.5kg (250lbs) before treatment, never regained consciousness after she was heavily sedated for the procedure. The 32-year-old was certified dead in hospital the same day.
Her cause of death could not be ascertained, but a medical expert ruled out an overdose of anaesthetics, trauma, haemorrhage and infection.