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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Privy Council rules in Nunez-Tesheira's favour in $18m medical negligence case

by

Derek Achong
993 days ago
20221025
Karen Nunez-Tesheira.

Karen Nunez-Tesheira.

ROBERTO CODALLO

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira has emerged vic­to­ri­ous in her marathon le­gal bat­tle with a pri­vate hos­pi­tal and a spe­cial­ist doc­tor over her hus­band's death dur­ing a rou­tine op­er­a­tion in 2004.

In a judge­ment de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil dis­missed two con­nect­ed ap­peals brought by Gulf View Med­ical Cen­tre Lim­it­ed and anaes­the­si­ol­o­gist Dr Crisen Jen­dra Roopc­hand.

In the ap­peals, the hos­pi­tal and Dr Roopc­hand were claim­ing that for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­peal Court Judge Vasheist Kokaram and the Court of Ap­peal got it wrong when they up­held Nunez-Tesheira's law­suit against them.

Lords Reed, Sales, Ham­blen, Stephens and Pent­land, who presided over the ap­peal, dis­missed all sev­en grounds raised be­fore them.

"There are no grounds for the Board to go be­hind such con­cur­rent find­ings as to the cause of the de­ceased's death," they said.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Nunez-Tesheira said she was pleased with the hard-fought vic­to­ry, which she at­trib­uted to her per­se­ver­ance and her le­gal team led by Dou­glas Mendes SC.

"It has been long and drawn out...It has tak­en a toll," she said.

Nunez-Tesheira, an at­tor­ney and can­di­date for Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal leader in up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions, not­ed that her ex­pe­ri­ence in pur­su­ing the case made her un­der­stand why med­ical neg­li­gence law­suits are no­to­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to win.

"I can't imag­ine what the man in the street must go through and how many are forced to give up," she said.

She said in ad­di­tion to hav­ing to face the time and ex­pense of de­fend­ing nu­mer­ous ap­peals in the case, she had dif­fi­cul­ties in sourc­ing ex­pert wit­ness­es lo­cal­ly.

She said she was even­tu­al­ly able to se­cure the ser­vices of a well-re­spect­ed lo­cal ex­pert, who gave her a state­ment be­fore re­tract­ing it. She said she was forced to turn to equal­ly qual­i­fied re­gion­al ex­perts but they on­ly agreed to par­tic­i­pate if they were able to pro­duce their re­ports along­side for­eign ex­perts.

Nunez-Tesheira said her dis­pute with the hos­pi­tal be­gan days af­ter her hus­band's death af­ter her rel­a­tives, who are doc­tors, sug­gest­ed she re­quest his med­ical records for in­de­pen­dent analy­sis. She claimed when she even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to pur­sue the law­suit, some of her friends and rel­a­tives tried to talk her out of it. She said she per­sist­ed in mem­o­ry of her hus­band, Rus­sell Tesheira, who she de­scribed as a won­der­ful fa­ther.

"I want­ed to make sure that they were not go­ing to walk away and in a year's time say sor­ry Rus­sell died," she said.

De­spite her le­gal vic­to­ry, Nunez-Tesheira was ap­pre­hen­sive about whether she would be able to eas­i­ly re­ceive her com­pen­sa­tion with­out en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings.

"Based on my ex­pe­ri­ence with them, I be­lieve I am up for an­oth­er chal­lenge," she said.

Nunez-Tesheira's hus­band an in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive, died while un­der­go­ing a transurethral re­sec­tion­ing op­er­a­tion to his prostate at the hos­pi­tal on April 13, 2004. Dur­ing the pro­ce­dure, an in­stru­ment is in­sert­ed up the pa­tient’s ure­thra to re­move the sec­tion of the prostate that is block­ing urine flow.

Two hours af­ter the pro­ce­dure, Tesheira was found to be bleed­ing ex­ces­sive­ly, prompt­ing doc­tors to per­form a sec­ondary op­er­a­tion and emer­gency blood trans­fu­sions. Tesheira died on the op­er­at­ing ta­ble.

Nunez-Tesheira filed the law­suit claim­ing the hos­pi­tal and the two doc­tors who did the pro­ce­dure - urol­o­gist Dr Lester Goetz and Dr Roopc­hand - were neg­li­gent in her hus­band’s death.

In 2011, Jus­tice Kokaram dis­missed the law­suit at a pre­lim­i­nary stage af­ter Nunez-Tesheira failed to meet two suc­ces­sive dead­lines he set for fil­ing her ev­i­dence against the three par­ties.

While ap­peal­ing the de­ci­sion, Nunez-Tesheira came to a set­tle­ment with Dr Goetz, which saw him be­ing re­moved from the law­suit with­out ac­cept­ing li­a­bil­i­ty.

Nunez-Tesheira even­tu­al­ly won in the Court of Ap­peal and the law­suit was re­in­stat­ed.

In March 2015, Jus­tice Kokaram ruled in Nunez-Tesheira's favour.

In as­sess­ing al­most $18 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for Tesheira’s fam­i­ly, less the ex-gra­tia pay­ment al­ready made by Dr Goetz, Kokaram con­sid­ered the salary and ben­e­fits he would have ac­crued if he had con­tin­ued to work at Cli­co, where his last an­nu­al bonus be­fore his death was al­most $4 mil­lion.

Jus­tice Kokaram's de­ci­sion was even­tu­al­ly up­held by the Court of Ap­peal, which re­versed some of his find­ings but ruled that he de­cid­ed the over­all case cor­rect­ly.

The hos­pi­tal and Dr Roopc­hand then filed a sep­a­rate law­suit seek­ing to have Dr Goetz pay a per­cent­age of the com­pen­sa­tion they were or­dered to pay. Their an­cil­lary case was even­tu­al­ly re­ject­ed by a High Court Judge and the Court of Ap­peal.

The com­pen­sa­tion Nunez-Tesheira is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive will be greater than what was ini­tial­ly as­sessed by Jus­tice Kokaram over sev­en years ago, as the hos­pi­tal and Dr Roopc­hand will be re­quired to pay in­ter­est for the pe­ri­od they were chal­leng­ing the out­come of the case.

Gulf View was rep­re­sent­ed by Mary O'Rourke, KC, David Boyle and Joseph Prince, while Kather­ine Deal, KC, rep­re­sent­ed Dr Roopc­hand.

Nunez-Tesheira's le­gal team al­so in­clud­ed Si­mon de la Bastide and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand.


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