'Dr Death' faces $1.5 mn lawsuit

Parents of a toddler in the United States, who died while being operated upon by Indian-origin doctor Jayant Patel, have filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against him.

'Dr Death' faces murder charges

The child's mother Ana McClellan launched legal action against Patel, dubbed 'Doctor Death' and linked to the deaths of 13 patients in northern Queensland state, last month after she learned that he was being investigated in Australia.

She alleged that her son who was then three, suffered from cerebral palsy, died of a toxic shock in 1999 after Patel accidentally punctured his bowel during the operation, according to Portland television KATU.

"Ian developed an infection and Patel performed a second surgery, but the boy got worse. A different doctor then performed a third surgery. This doctor said it did not look good. His whole bowel had died. And so, the only option was that we had was to close him up," McClellan told KATU.

The McClellans did not know about botched surgeries and patient deaths linked to Patel until last April when they saw a television story about him. "When I saw his picture, I knew that he was the surgeon who had operated on Ian," she said.

"We thought about our son's death in one way for six or seven years and then one night, boom, it had all changed," said Matthew McClellan, Ian's father.

McClellan is also suing Patel's former US employer, healthcare group Kaiser Permanente, who recommended that the surgeon operate upon her son. Her lawyer, Robert Beatty-Walters, said attempts to serve Patel with a complaint at his home in Portland, Oregon, had so far been unsuccessful.

Patel was director of surgery at Queensland's Bundaberg Base Hospital for two years from 2003 but fled to the US in April last year after being accused of malpractices in state parliament. Last month, Queensland's police sought to charge Patel with at least 28 criminal charges of manslaughter, assault and fraud. But the state's director of public prosecutions is yet to lay charges against him.