Government wants suit over VA death tossed

ST. LOUIS -- The U.S. government has asked a federal judge to throw out one of two lawsuits filed by Kentucky women who claim that surgical care at a Southern Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital killed their husbands.

In court papers filed Friday in East St. Louis, Ill., the government claimed that Katrina Shank -- whose husband, Robert Shank III, apparently bled to death last August after gallbladder surgery at the Marion VA hospital -- failed to file a required affidavit, a letter from an expert attesting there's a reasonable basis for the lawsuit.

But Shank's attorney called the filing a stall tactic, saying Illinois requires such affidavits in malpractice cases filed in state courts but that they're not mandatory for malpractice cases filed in federal court.

"If the court feels it is required, we'll get one," attorney Stan Heller said.

In a separate filing Friday, U.S. attorneys also asked a judge for more time -- perhaps until Sept. 22 -- to respond in writing to a similar lawsuit filed in April by Darla Marshall, whose husband died of a blood infection in July 2007, six days after he underwent a lymph node biopsy at the hospital.

Katrina Shank seeks $12 million in damages, Darla Marshall $10 million.

Randy Massey, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office in Fairview Heights, Ill., declined on Monday to elaborate on the government's position on the lawsuits. Messages left Monday with the VA's headquarters in Washington were not immediately returned.

The suits name only the U.S. government, which runs the Veterans Affairs system that includes the Marion hospital.

Shank's and Marshall's husbands both were patients of surgeon Jose Veizaga-Mendez, who resigned last August three days after Robert Shank's death.

Later that month, surgeries at the Marion site -- which serves veterans from Southern Illinois, southwestern Indiana and western Kentucky -- were halted after the VA found at least nine deaths between October 2006 and March 2007 were "directly attributable" to substandard care there.

Those deaths did not include Robert Shank and James Marshall, who died months later.

Still, the lawsuits allege, "many or all of these patients who died between October 2006 and March 2007 were patients of Dr. Veizaga-Mendez."

Of an additional 34 cases the VA investigated, 10 patients died after receiving questionable care that complicated their health, officials said. Investigators could not determine if the actual care caused those deaths.

Both wrongful-death lawsuits accuse the government of negligence for allegedly not adequately checking Veizaga-Mendez's background before hiring him in January 2006.

Katrina Shank and Darla Marshall claim a better check would have uncovered Veizaga-Mendez's "history of providing substandard care to his patients" in Massachusetts, where he was under investigation for allegedly botching seven cases in 2004 and 2005, including two that resulted in deaths.

Veizaga-Mendez's Illinois license was indefinitely suspended by regulators last October. The next month, he was permanently barred from practicing medicine in Massachusetts -- a move that also required him to resign medical licenses he may have held in other states and withdraw pending license applications. He also has made payouts in two Massachusetts malpractice lawsuits.

Veizaga-Mendez has no listed telephone number and has not responded to repeated messages left by The Associated Press at a Massachusetts home listed as an address for his wife.

Interim administrators have been in place at the Marion VA hospital since September, shortly after the site's director, chief of staff, chief of surgery and an anesthesiologist were moved to other positions or placed on leave. The anesthesiologist since has quit.

Minor surgical procedures resumed at the Marion hospital in May, but the VA has not said when major operations would return or permanent management would be in place there.