EL&C Trial Attorneys

Suit Over Death After Cesarean Ends in Settlement for $1.45M

NEW JERSEY LAW JOURNAL
SUITS & DEALS - MAY 18, 1998

Tur v. St. Peter's Medical Center: The widower of an Old Bridge woman, who died from internal bleeding after a Cesarean section, received $1.45 million to settle his wrongful death claims against a hospital and three doctors.

The settlement, approved on March 30 by Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Douglas Hague, was confirmed by James Murray, the civil division manager in Middlesex County. On May 8, Mark Tur received $1 million from Princeton Insurance Co., the carrier for St. Peter's Medical Center in New Brunswick and doctors Brad Cohen and Sanford White, according to the plaintiff's attorney, William Levinson of William Levinson & Associates in Edison.

The remaining $450,000 was paid by the carrier for Dr. Marcia Katz, the remaining defendant. The name of the carrier was not made public. Levinson and Katz's attorney, Jay MacNeill, a partner with Roseland's Post, Polak, Goodsell & MacNeill, declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement.

Tur filed suit in Middlesex County Superior Court in June 1995 as the executor of the estate of his wife, Lorraine, who was 34 at the time of her death in June 1994.

Tur's suit claimed that during the birth of their third child, his wife suffered from placenta accreta, a condition where the plancenta adheres to the uterus. He alleged that Cohen, who performed the Cesarean, failed to properly stitch the location where the placenta attaches to the uterus, causing the patient to hemorrhage. Tur also claimed that the hysterectomy performed by Dr. White failed to stop the bleeding.

Then, while Tur was in intensive care, Dr. Katz allegedly failed to notice that she was taking in a great deal of fluid intravenously but excreting very little, Levinson says. Tur died a day after giving birth.

Richard Amdur, a partner with Amdur, Boyle & Maggs in Eatontown who represents St. Peter's and Drs. Cohen and White, declines to comment on the case.

John Blumenstock, a partner with Ledy-Gurren & Blumenstock in Manhattan, was co-counsel to the plaintiffs.

By Cheryl Winokur

Reprinted with permission from the New Jersey Law Journal, May 18, 1998 by American Lawyer Media, L.P.