A settlement has been reached between Melissa Rivers and Yorkville Endoscopy over the 2014 death of her mother, Joan Rivers. For those who don’t know, Joan Rivers was admitted to Yorkville for a “vocal-cord biopsy,” but during the procedure, she went into cardiac arrest. From there, she was hospitalized at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she later died. As a result of her mother’s death, Melissa filed a “medical-malpractice lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court against the doctors who performed” her mother’s procedure.
A settlement has been reached between Melissa Rivers and Yorkville Endoscopy over the 2014 death of her mother, Joan Rivers. For those who don’t know, Joan Rivers was admitted to Yorkville for a “vocal-cord biopsy,” but during the procedure, she went into cardiac arrest. From there, she was hospitalized at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she later died. As a result of her mother’s death, Melissa filed a “medical-malpractice lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court against the doctors who performed” her mother’s procedure.
The settlement itself was reached over a week ago “in order to avoid a drawn-out litigation,” and “was made before the defendants could contest alleged claims that doctors performed unauthorized medical procedures, snapped a selfie with the comedian, and failed to act as her vital signs deteriorated.”
Other allegations in the lawsuit claim the “doctors at Yorkville Endoscopy mishandled her procedure, choosing to perform a laryngoscopy on Rivers’ vocal cords” without River’s consent. According to the Associated Press, “the suit claimed that an anesthesiologist expressed concern over what the [laryngoscopy] would do to Rivers’ ability to breathe, but was told she was being ‘paranoid’ by the gastroenterologist performing the endoscopy.”
While certain details of the settlement are being kept private, such as the settlement amount, other details are available to the public, such as the clinic’s many errors, which, according to the lawsuit, include:
- The clinic did not have properly recorded medication records
- The doctors did take selfies
- Yorkville hadn’t received informed consent for each procedure doctors performed on Rivers, and
- The staff hadn’t recorded the comedian’s weight before sedating her.
In response to the settlement, Melissa Rivers issued a statement saying:
“In accepting this settlement, I am able to put the legal aspects of my mother’s death behind me and ensure that those culpable for her death have accepted responsibility for their actions quickly and without equivocation. Moving forward, my focus will be to ensure that no one ever has to go through what my mother, [my son] Cooper and I went through and I will work towards ensuring higher safety standards in out-patient surgical clinics.”
On the other side of the aisle, a spokesperson for Yorkville Endoscopy said:
“Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the Rivers family. We remain committed to providing quality, compassionate healthcare services that meet the needs of our patients, their families and the community.”
Sources:
Melissa Rivers Reaches Settlement in Medical-Malpractice Suit over Joan Rivers’s Death
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