Gov't wants Ky. widow's suit over VA death tossed

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ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The U.S. government has asked a federal judge to throw out one of two lawsuits filed by Kentucky women who claim that surgical care at a southern Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital killed their husbands.

In court papers filed Friday in East St. Louis, Ill., the government claimed that Katrina Shank - whose husband, Robert Shank III, apparently bled to death in August after gallbladder surgery at the Marion VA hospital - failed to file a required affidavit, a letter from an expert attesting there's a reasonable basis for the lawsuit.

Shank's attorney called the filing a stall tactic, saying Illinois requires such affidavits in malpractice cases filed in state courts but that they're not mandatory for malpractice cases filed in federal court.

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Surgeries at the Marion site - which serves veterans from southern Illinois, southwestern Indiana and western Kentucky - were halted in August after the VA found at least nine deaths between October 2006 and March 2007 were "directly attributable" to substandard care there. Those deaths did not include Shank's or Marshall's.

AP