Melissa Rivers filed a medical malpractice suit against two doctors and three anesthesiologists in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday over the coma and death of her mother, comedian Joan Rivers.
"Had the doctors acted as physicians for Joan Rivers instead of groupies, Joan Rivers would have been doing ‘Fashion Police’ last week," family lawyer Jeffrey Bloom
told the New York Daily News.
In the suit, Melissa Rivers alleges that the doctors at Yorkville Endoscopy snapped selfie photos with their sedated patient during her August 2014 surgery and ignored pleas from an anesthesiologist to halt the procedure after an unauthorized action led to an emergency.
What should have been a routine endoscopy examining Joan's esophagus for voice damage gave way to a crisis after the doctors performed an unauthorized biopsy, causing a laryngospasm.
As Joan's blood pressure, pulse, heart rate, and oxygen levels dropped precipitously over the course of 17 minutes, they also failed to cut into her trachea to restore oxygen to her brain, said the filing.
Gwen Korovin, Joan's personal doctor who is unaffiliated with the endoscopy clinic, is also named in the suit. Melissa Rivers alleges that Korovin should not have been permitted in the room during the procedure, but announced "I'll go first," when lining up to take photos with the sedated Joan. The other doctors said that Joan "will like to see these in the recovery area."
After the unauthorized biopsy, throat spasm, and partial asphyxiation occurred, Korovin reportedly abandoned Joan. She left the room, afraid she would be caught in there when she wasn't supposed to be.
Rivers subsequently went into a coma, and died seven days later.