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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Surgeon should help pay $18m medical lawsuit

by

2578 days ago
20180130

A pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion is seek­ing to have the sur­geon, who op­er­at­ed on the hus­band of for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira, pay a per­cent­age of the $18 mil­lion med­ical neg­li­gence judg­ment over his death.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Gulf View Med­ical Cen­tre yes­ter­day pre­sent­ed sub­mis­sions in its ap­peal over the de­ci­sion of High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad to dis­miss its case against urol­o­gist Dr Lester Goetz in No­vem­ber, last year.

Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion was based on the fact that Gulf View failed to raise Goetz’s al­leged con­trib­u­to­ry neg­li­gence in Nunez-Tesheira’s sub­stan­tive law­suit and sought to do so af­ter it had lost the case in 2015.

In­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive Rus­sell Tesheira died at age 54 af­ter un­der­go­ing a transurethral re­sec­tion­ing of the prostate op­er­a­tion at the Gulf View Med­ical Cen­tre on April 13, 2004.

Goetz was re­moved as a de­fen­dant in the sub­stan­tive case on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2012, af­ter he came to a $2 mil­lion out-of-court set­tle­ment with Nunez-Tesheira.

British Queen’s Coun­sel Mary O’Rourke yes­ter­day sub­mit­ted that her client’s move was le­git­i­mate as it had two years from the date of the judg­ment to do so.

O’Rourke claimed her client was be­ing held li­able for Tesh­e­ria’s death when the med­ical cen­tre mere­ly pro­vid­ed the fa­cil­i­ties for his op­er­a­tion in 2004.

Goetz’s lawyer, Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, SC, re­sist­ed the ap­pli­ca­tion as he agreed with Seep­er­sad that it should have been raised at an ear­li­er stage.

He al­so ques­tioned why sim­i­lar pro­ceed­ings were not brought against anaes­the­si­ol­o­gist, Dr Crisen Roopc­hand, who al­so op­er­at­ed on Tesheira and was list­ed as a de­fen­dant in the neg­li­gence claim.

O’Rourke op­posed the ar­gu­ment as she point­ed out that Roopc­hand was not re­moved from the law­suit and judg­ment was de­liv­ered against both him and Gulf View.

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions, Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Gre­go­ry Smith and Prakash Moo­sai, re­served their de­ci­sion on whether to re­in­sti­tute the claim against Goetz.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, the judges al­so grant­ed Gulf View con­di­tion­al leave to ap­peal the med­ical neg­li­gence judg­ment and the Court of Ap­peal’s sub­se­quent de­ci­sion to up­hold it, be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

The judges de­ferred an ap­pli­ca­tion, to stay the en­force­ment of the judg­ment pend­ing the ap­peal, to April.

Gulf View is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Alvin Pariags­ingh, while Dou­glas Mendes, SC, is rep­re­sent­ing Nunez-Tesheira.


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