GLENDALE, California (AP) — A California jury has cleared a cardiologist and a radiologist of negligence in the diagnosis and treatment of actor John Ritter.
Ritter died of a torn aorta in 2003.
The jurors found that Ritter was advised by the radiologist to follow up with treatment by a physician, but Ritter didn’t follow the order. The radiologist had completed a body scan on him two years earlier.
The case went to the jury Thursday morning and the panel spent a day and half behind closed doors before reaching a 9-3 verdict in the $67 million wrongful death suit brought by Ritter’s widow, Amy Yasbeck, and his children. Verdicts do not have to be unanimous in civil cases.
Attorneys gave jurors drastically different views Wednesday on whether anything could have been done to save the actor on the night he died.
A proper diagnosis would have led to immediate emergency surgery and saved Ritter’s life, family attorney Moses Lebovits said in closing arguments.
But lawyers for the two doctors being sued said they acted properly and insisted there was no way Ritter could have survived.
“We’re not saying John Ritter was negligent and caused his own death,” said attorney Stephen C. Fraser, addressing claims that Ritter failed to seek adequate medical care long before he was stricken.
“There was nothing that could have been done to prevent John Ritter from having an aortic dissection. He didn’t have it because he failed to do follow-up or didn’t take his medication,” Fraser said.
The jury was to begin deliberations Thursday.
Ritter died in 2003 at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank after becoming ill while working on his hit TV show “8 Simple Rules … for Dating My Teenage Daughter.” The 54-year-old actor was treated for a heart attack but actually died of a torn aorta.
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