Melissa Rivers feels strongly that her mother, Joan Rivers, should be alive today.
“In my opinion, it was 100 percent preventable,” Melissa, 47, said of her mother’s September 2014 death on Monday’s “Today” show.
While she knows what happened to her mother could have happened to anyone, Melissa feels that the clinic’s lack of preparedness and attention to detail, along with the unprofessional behavior of some of its employees, cost her mother her life.
“Yes, it was a tragic accident,” she said. “If something happens, and everyone does everything properly, things happen … You live with it. When it’s error after error, after error, after error, after behaviors that you cannot even begin to get your head around — you get mad.”
In Melissa’s suit, which was filed in January, she alleges that the doctors treating her mother were cluessly cracking jokes and taking selfies while their famous patient was crashing on the operating table.
An anesthesiologist named in the suit, Dr. Renuka Bankulla, filed a response days later insisting that she took every lifesaving measure at her disposal in a bid to resuscitate the late comedian.
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