The family of track star Florence Griffith Joyner is blaming a St. Louis hospital for her death, charging in a lawsuit that doctors failed to detect a brain abnormality two years earlier.
Joyner was rushed to Washington University's Barnes-Jewish Hospital in April 1996 after suffering a seizure on a flight to St. Louis, where she was to attend a relay race.
The lawsuit, filed in a Missouri court under pseudonyms, says that hospital workers improperly interpreted an MRI and other tests. The family argues that the tests should have uncovered her medical condition, in which the blood vessels in the brain tighten and cause seizures.
The suit accuses the hospital of neglecting to compare those scans to previous tests and not reviewing her medical records.
Joyner died at her Mission Viejo home in September 1998 at age 38. The Orange County coroner concluded that she suffered an epileptic seizure and probably suffocated in her bed.
The plaintiffs are listed as Al Jones, Mary Ruth Jones and the estate of Florence Jones. Sources close to the case said the actual plaintiffs are Al Joyner, Florence's husband, Mary Ruth Joyner, her young daughter, and the estate of Florence Griffith Joyner.
Medical malpractice experts said that if the family is to prevail, it must prove that the care the athlete received fell below the industry standard and contributed significantly to her death.
"Normally, if [hospital officials] think they didn't do anything wrong, they won't settle these cases. But it's a high-publicity case, and it invokes some sympathy," said Marshall Silberberg, a medical malpractice defense attorney in Orange County. UCLA law professor Gary Schwartz said it is relatively common for families to file lawsuits accusing doctors of failing to diagnose fatal conditions. Those suits are difficult to win, he said, but Joyner's celebrity status makes this case a bit different.
"Hospitals don't want publicity. That might increase the hospital's motivation to settle," Schwartz said. "The hospital might fear a sympathetic jury and more publicity to the case because of her celebrity."
Barnes-Jewish Hospital is one of the top-ranked hospitals in the country. Last month, U.S. News and World Report published a survey that said Barnes-Jewish had the ninth-best neurology department in the nation. The same survey listed Barnes-Jewish as the country's seventh-best hospital overall.
