San Diego Jury Awards $105 Million Against "pH Miracle" Author Robert O. Young

Dawn Kali went looking for a way to beat her breast cancer and found Robert O. Young. Young is the author of "The pH Miracle," a best-selling book that claims disease can be reversed by keeping the body alkaline. He told Kali he could cure her without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. His program involved an all-vegetable diet, blood cleansing, colonic therapy, and intravenous infusions of sodium bicarbonate, the chemical name for baking soda. Young carried himself as a doctor. He held no medical license.

Kali followed his advice for years. She traveled to Young's ranch in Valley Center, paid more than $2,000 a night to stay there, and paid roughly $500 for each baking soda infusion. While she trusted his regimen, her cancer kept advancing. By 2013, when she finally returned to conventional doctors, the disease had spread to her bones. She was told she had about four years to live.

Kali sued Young for fraud and related claims. Bibi Fell of Gomez Trial Attorneys tried the case in San Diego County Superior Court. Over a five-day trial, Fell showed the jury that Young had no license to practice medicine, that he posed as a physician, and that he steered a cancer patient away from care that could have helped her. "He is greedy. He is selfish," Fell told jurors, arguing that Young valued his own glory more than the lives of the people who paid him.

In late October 2018, the jury sided with Kali. It awarded her about $105 million: roughly $856,000 for medical costs, $5 million for past pain and suffering, $84.5 million for future pain and suffering, and $15 million in punitive damages. The figure came to more than double what she had asked for.

Young moved for a new trial. The trial judge agreed the verdict was too high and ordered a remittitur, cutting the future pain and suffering award to $10 million and the punitive award to $10 million. Kali accepted the reduction, and the court entered an amended judgment of $25,856,000. Young appealed, and in February 2021 a California appeals court upheld most of the judgment but found that even the reduced future pain and suffering award was still too high given Kali's shortened life expectancy, sending that piece back to be cut further.

The civil case ran alongside a criminal one. Young was convicted of practicing medicine without a license and sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. Dawn Kali died of cancer in May 2024.