A 40-year-old Italian man took a doctor and two medical clinics to court after paying for a penis enlargement procedure that he claims left him with “impotence and erectile dysfunction”.

The unnamed man from Tuscany, Italy, allegedly paid a cosmetic surgeon 5,000 euros ($5,400) for a penis enlargement procedure, but after about a month he ended up calling the doctor to complain about physical discomfort. This was only the beginning of a painful odyssey that saw the patient undergo a total of 12 procedures in an attempt to fix the initial botched surgery. According to court documents obtained by Italian news media, the man had two lipofilling operations, in which fat from various parts of his body was transferred to his penis in order to adjust its shape. Unfortunately, they did not have the desired effect, as the man’s genitals did not maintain the expected shape and volume.

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The Florentine edition of Italian newspaper La Repubblica wrote that the man allegedly underwent several other procedures to repair the damage to his genitals, but they only made things worse. According to experts quoted in the court documents, during some of these procedures silicone which has been banned since 1993 was used. After going through a reported 12 procedures which left his penis deformed and unable to be used in a sexual act, the man was asked to go under the knife once again, at which point he decided to sue the doctor and the medical facilities where the procedures were performed.

The accused doctor defended himself in court by claiming that the patient was initially satisfied with the result of the operation, even sending him videos as proof and that he had signed a consent form beforehand. However, the Pistoia court dismissed his claims, ruling that the patient “was not aware of the physical risks he was facing,” and adding that his satisfaction with the aesthetic result of the operation was totally irrelevant, because “it was the healthcare professional’s job to evaluate the success of the procedure”.

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The two clinics involved in this case attempted to avoid responsibility by claiming that they were only “lending” their facilities to the doctor, but the judge ruled that they benefited from the doctor’s work and shared responsibility. In the end, the doctor was ordered to pay 60 percent of the compensation, while the clinics had to pay 20 percent each.

Compensation was set to 153,000 euros ($165,700), but the patient ended up with only around 110,000 euros, because the court ruled that 30 percent of the damage he had sustained to his genitals was his own fault. The man admitted to administering injections that he claimed were prescribed by the same doctor to his penis at home, which the court decided had contributed to the deformity and the erectile dysfunction.