FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



Jul 21, 4:40 PM EDT


Federal attorneys ask judge to toss Ky. widow's lawsuit over husband's death at VA hospital

By JIM SUHR
Associated Press Writer


ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The U.S. government has asked a federal judge to throw out one of two lawsuits filed by Kentucky women who claim that surgical care at a southern Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital killed their husbands.

In court papers filed Friday in East St. Louis, Ill., the government claimed that Katrina Shank - whose husband, Robert Shank III, apparently bled to death in August after gallbladder surgery at the Marion VA hospital - failed to file a required affidavit, a letter from an expert attesting there's a reasonable basis for the lawsuit.

Shank's attorney called the filing a stall tactic, saying Illinois requires such affidavits in malpractice cases filed in state courts but that they're not mandatory for malpractice cases filed in federal court.

"If the court feels it is required, we'll get one," attorney Stan Heller said.

In a separate filing Friday, U.S. attorneys asked a judge for more time to respond in writing to a similar lawsuit filed in April by Darla Marshall, whose husband, James, died of a blood infection in July 2007, six days after he underwent a lymph node biopsy at the hospital.

The government's response had been due Monday. There were no court hearings scheduled on either lawsuit.

Katrina Shank seeks $12 million in damages, Darla Marshall $10 million.

Randy Massey, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Fairview Heights, Ill., declined on Monday to elaborate on the government's position on the lawsuits. Messages left Monday with the VA's headquarters in Washington were not immediately returned.

The suits name only the U.S. government, which runs the Veterans Affairs system that includes the Marion hospital.

Robert Shank and James Marshall were patients of surgeon Jose Veizaga-Mendez, who resigned three days after Robert Shank's death.

Surgeries at the Marion site - which serves veterans from southern Illinois, southwestern Indiana and western Kentucky - were halted in August after the VA found at least nine deaths between October 2006 and March 2007 were "directly attributable" to substandard care there. Those deaths did not include Shank's or Marshall's.

The lawsuits accuse the government of negligence, saying it inadequately checked Veizaga-Mendez's background before hiring him in January 2006.

They claim a better check would have uncovered Veizaga-Mendez's "history of providing substandard care to his patients" in Massachusetts, where he was under investigation for allegedly botching seven cases in 2004 and 2005, including two that resulted in deaths. He has made payouts in two Massachusetts malpractice lawsuits.

Veizaga-Mendez's Illinois license was indefinitely suspended by regulators in October. The next month, he was permanently barred from practicing medicine in Massachusetts.

Veizaga-Mendez has no listed telephone number and has not responded to repeated messages left by The Associated Press at a Massachusetts home listed as an address for his wife.


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