New details regarding Joan Rivers' death have been revealed as Melissa Rivers officially filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against Yorkville Endoscopy.
According to a report from New York Daily News, Joan Rivers' death resulted from the neglect of the doctors of the now infamous Upper East Side outpatient clinic. The late comedienne had gone to the said medical facility last August 2014 for a routine throat procedure that went awry and placed her in a coma.
The "Fashion Police" host died a week later on Sept. 4.
The lawsuit filed by the TV icon's only daughter in the Manhattan Supreme Court detailed the staff's negligence. The doctors, namely former Yorkville Endoscopy medical director Lawrence B. Cohen and celebrity ear, nose, and throat specialist Gwen Korovin, were allegedly so engrossed in taking cellphone photos of Joan Rivers during the actual procedure.
They also allegedly dismissed how the anaesthesiologist, Renuka Reddy Bankulla, wanted to stop the procedure upon seeing that their patient's vital signs went down.
"You're being paranoid ... You're such a curious cat. You always need to see everything," Lawrence B. Cohen allegedly told the anesthesiologist, said the lawsuit.
Court documents also revealed that it took the doctors 17 minutes to cut into the trachea of 81-year-old celebrity to send oxygen to her brain. Joan Rivers' death was ruled out to have been caused by loss of oxygen during the botched operation.
"Had the doctors acted as physicians for Joan Rivers instead of groupies, Joan Rivers would have been doing 'Fashion Police' last week," said Jeffrey Bloom, one of the family's lawyers from Gair, Gair, Conason, Steigman McKauf, Bloom and Rabinowitz.
The pain from Joan Rivers' death was evident in the official statement recently released by her 47-year-old daughter, who is pushing to move forward with the high-profile lawsuit against Yorkville Endoscopy.
"No family should ever have to go through what my mother, (son) Cooper and I have been through," Melissa Rivers said.
"The level of medical mismanagement, incompetency, disrespect and outrageous behavior is shocking and frankly almost incomprehensible."
"Not only did my mother deserve better, every patient deserves better," Melissa Rivers said.
"Melissa wants to make sure that this never happens to anyone else. Ambulatory care centers need to have the same oversight that hospitals have to ensure that patients are treated properly," added Ben Rubinowitz, one of the family's lawyers.
