NEW YORK (AP) — The hospital center that dispatched paramedics and treated Eric Garner as he died after being placed into a chokehold by police has agreed to pay $1 million to the family, according to court records obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
The settlement with Richmond University Medical Center is confidential and wasn’t part of the $5.9 million agreement announced by the city in July. But the figure was disclosed in court documents filed in Surrogate’s Court on Staten Island that outline how the money will be dispersed to his family. Garner left no will.
The figure is the maximum claim allowed under the hospital center’s liability insurance policy, according to court papers.
The hospital center had no comment on the settlement, according to spokesman William Smith. Garner’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Garner, a 43-year-old black father of six, died during the encounter on July 17, 2014. Video of the arrest that has been widely circulated online shows the asthmatic, overweight man yelling, “I can’t breathe!” after a white officer wraps his arm around Garner’s neck and he’s wrestled to the ground by police. Emergency workers arrive after officers call 911, check his pulse and make sure he’s breathing before placing him on the stretcher.
“Sir, it’s EMS. We’re here to help you. We’re getting the stretcher, all right?” one worker says to Garner when they arrive at 3:36 p.m.
He does not answer.
Later, when a bystander asks on video why they aren’t trying to resuscitate him, an officer says it’s because Garner is breathing.
“The EMTs did not conduct the appropriate examination” of Garner at the scene and “failed to provide him with the necessary life-saving procedures,” according to the court documents.
Hospital records, also filed in the documents, say Garner went into cardiac arrest on the stretcher. The medics tried to resuscitate Garner in the ambulance and doctors again performed CPR at the emergency room. By 4:15, he had no pulse, and he was declared dead at 4:34 p.m. The medical examiner determined his death was caused by the chokehold and restraint by police, coupled with acute asthma, obesity — Garner weighed 395 pounds and was 6-foot-2 — and heart disease.
Two paramedics and two emergency medical technicians were initially suspended without pay by the hospital, but they were reinstated into roles that did not involve patient care. They have since returned to the job, according to hospital officials.
Also detailed in the documents is a proposal for how to disperse the money. Garner’s widow will received about $2.4 million. His children will receive sums that range from $195,000 to $996,000. His mother, Gwen Carr, will receive $124,000 for acting as administrator of his estate, and the law firm that represented the family will receive $2.3 million, or one-third, which is a common attorney fee. The family’s first attorney, Sanford Rubenstein, fired amid an unrelated sex assault investigation where he was eventually cleared, also requested an undisclosed sum, which the family is disputing.
A judge set a hearing for March 16 to formalize the proposal.
No criminal charges have been filed in Garner’s death, which helped galvanize a national movement on police treatment of minorities, but a federal probe continues. Officers have been called before a federal grand jury in Brooklyn. Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who put his arm around Garner’s neck, has said he was using a legal takedown maneuver, not a chokehold which is prohibited under police policy.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Now if I were a Republican, I’d say this is how the markets regulate bad behavior: see no regulations or criminal justice needed. Then I’d be calling my congress person about all those damn frivolous lawsuits!
There is some missing information here, or the hospital just gave up in the face of whatever the lawyers were threatening. You don’t do CPR or intubate someone who is breathing. Did he stop breathing and they ignored it, or what?
Will the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of the City of New York be covering this expense, or do they expect Beyoncé to hold some fund-raising concerts?
I don’t know if the paramedics and EMTs could have saved his life, but I know they didn’t create the problem. Some officers decided that they had to make an arrest for a bullshit, nonviolent nano-infraction that they didn’t witness and that the DA would never bother prosecuting. The officers further decided that it was necessary to get physical to make the arrest, even though Garner was neither trying to flee the scene nor trying to harm any person or property. Those officers killed him.
I think the point was he wasn’t. Breathing that is.
I’m sure Garner’s death was all within “department policy” and “hospital policy”. Perhaps the the policy needs to change since it allows this crap.
From what I understand Garner had a history of selling “loosies” or single cigarettes. Since a pack of cigs is more than 12 bucks in NYC ( New York has the highest cost for tobacco in the USA ) lots of folks like to buy just one as it costs so much less. So Garner buys a pack, and pays the taxes when he does so, then sells the smokes as singles, at a mark up for profit, on the street. The beef is a tax beef. Even though Garner paid the sales tax when he bought the pack.
This is the crime. Again, from what I understand he was NOT selling cigs at the time of his fatal encounter with the police but because of his prior history the Cops thought is OK ( and I’m sure within Department policy ) to fuck with him. He objected as an American should and was killed. Like Freddie Gray or Tamir Rice he had not committed a crime but Cops thought their innocence warranted lethal enforcement. ( You shoot it’s lethal, you choke hold its lethal ) What do they have in common?
Not to worry though. It’s all within “department policy”. And that is the problem…not the Black folks. And for the authoritarians out there…you can bet this killing was defensible…that’s why the payouts exceed 6 million.