GLENDALE, Calif. (AP) - March 4, 2008
Amy Yasbeck sometimes could barely speak through her tears as
she recounted the last hours in which she was summoned to a
hospital and told her husband was having a heart attack and needed
an angiogram.
She said that Ritter, who was in a hospital bed, was "scared"
and asked Dr. Joseph Lee, one of the two defendants in the lawsuit,
if he could get a second opinion before he agreed to the procedure.
"Dr. Lee said, 'No, there's no time. You're in the middle of a
heart attack,"' Yasbeck testified.
She said Lee asked Ritter to sign a consent form and read him
its details.
Asked by her lawyer, Moses Lebovits, what happened next, Yasbeck
broke into gasping sobs.
"I leaned down to John's ear and said, 'I know you're scared
but you have to be brave and do this because these guys know what
they're doing.' And he was brave for all the time I saw him," she
said.
Yasbeck said that as Ritter was wheeled down a hall on a gurney
he used sign language to say "I love you." She said she mouthed
the same words back.
"He went around the corner and that's the last time I saw
him," she said.
Ritter, 54, fell ill earlier in the day while working on the
sitcom "8 Simple Rules ... for Dating My Teenage Daughter" and
died of a torn aorta at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in
Burbank. His family is suing Lee and a radiologist, Dr. Matthew
Lotysch, who did a body scan on Ritter two years earlier, for $67
million.
The doctors deny wrongdoing. The radiologist has testified the
aorta was normal in the scan but Ritter had coronary artery disease
at a relatively young age.
Yasbeck told of the long wait to hear what was happening after
Ritter was wheeled away, and of overhearing someone calling "code
blue," which she recognized from an audition she had done for the
show "ER."
Shortly after that, she said, a doctor who had arrived from the
Disney studios came out and told her Ritter was "crashing" and
that a surgeon had been summoned.
She said the doctor drew a picture for her and explained that
Ritter's aorta had shredded and "it was a bad thing."
At some point - after she was joined by Ritter's ex-wife, Nancy
Ritter, and their son Jason - the surgeon came to them.
"He said it was over and John's dead, that they worked on John
for a long time but the damage was done by the time he got there.
It was a fait accompli and John was dead," Yasbeck said.
Yasbeck then told of going home to tell her 5-year-old daughter,
Stella, that her father had died. She waited until the next morning
because the child was asleep.
Asked by her lawyer to tell jurors what Stella lost with
Ritter's death, she said, "As much as I lost my husband and the
love of my life and my soul mate, what I lost was Stella's
father."
She said when it came to child rearing, "I really was dependent
on him. I was 36 years old. He was so freaking wise about this
stuff. And Stella, every day she wakes up and there's a new way to
miss her father. I can't make up for that. It's a new road to face
every day."
The testimony was offered in part to demonstrate to jurors the
devastation suffered by the family from the loss of Ritter. In the
courtroom audience, his brother, Tom, wiped his eyes.
Nancy Ritter, who was married to the actor for 19 years, also
took the stand and testified about his importance to their three
children and his decision to have a complete body scan two years
before he died.
She said she urged him to do it and when it was over he told her
it had gone well.
"He implied to me that he was reassured he was OK. Maybe he was
protecting me," she said.
The plaintiffs rested their case after Yasbeck's testimony and
the defense opened its presentation with a brief appearance by
Ritter's personal trainer, who said the actor was concerned about
improving his health and was working out regularly.
The current lawsuit follows settlements with the hospital and
eight other medical personnel for about $14 million.
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