Forensic pathologist weighs in on N.I. woman's death
5/4/2001
Laga testifies that Robicheaux died from injured, not infected, lung
CROWLEY - A forensic pathologist told jurors Thursday that a New Iberia woman died from respiratory failure and not because she smothered.
Dr. Emile Laga, a New Iberia forensic pathologist, testified in the 15th Judicial District Court before Judge Jules Edwards in the civil trial of Curtis Robicheaux and his children against Dr. Carman Adly, the Pauline Faulk Centre for Behavioral Health in Rayne - which is owned by American Legion Hospital - and the Morris Lahasky Nursing Home in Erath.
The Robicheaux family is alleging malpractice, misdiagnosis, improper administration of medicine and misuse of chemical and physical restraints.
Laga said he performed an autopsy on Judy Robicheaux, who had a progressive neuromuscular disease that affected breathing and is terminal, and determined that she died because her lungs stopped working.
"Basically what we saw was an injured lung and not an infected lung," Laga told the jury.
He told jurors the autopsy countered the information listed on the woman's death certificate because he was able to do tests to determine what caused her death.
Doctors listed Robicheaux's cause of death as aspiration pneumonia.
"We proved this wrong by way of pathological means," Laga said.
On Thursday, the absence of Dr. Adly, who fled to his native Iran in 1996 with $1.2 million he allegedly defrauded from state Medicaid funds, became a dispute between the lawyers in the case.
Adly was a psychiatrist who treated Robicheaux, 47, for mental illness before she died on Dec. 6, 1995.
One of the defense lawyers representing the nursing home, Tom Morrow, asked Dr. George Seiden, a forensic psychiatrist, if he was aware of Adly's problems with the government and the allegations of Medicaid fraud.
Clayton Burgess, who is representing the Robicheaux family, and his co-counsel, Charles Benjamin Landry, said the court had previously determined that no mention could be made of the fraud allegations.
Judge Edwards ruled that Adly had not been convicted of fraud and the information would be prejudicial. He would not allow Burgess to question Dr. Seiden about the matter.