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Monday, July 14, 2025

Widow: $20m medical

lawsuit not exaggerated

by

2847 days ago
20170928

Derek Achong

Al­most sev­en years af­ter busi­ness­man Ri­car­do "Smokey" McKen­zie died, his wid­ow tes­ti­fied in court in her $20 m law­suit against Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre over the med­ical in­sti­tu­tion's al­leged role in his death.

Lisa McKen­zie took the wit­ness stand be­fore Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er in the Port-of-Spain High Court for the con­tin­u­a­tion of her med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit against the Cen­tre, where her hus­band un­der­went ra­di­a­tion treat­ment in 2009.

McKen­zie was ques­tioned by Cen­tre's at­tor­neys over her claim of US$567,000 spent on his med­ical care in the Unit­ed States be­fore his death and her claim of al­most $16 m rep­re­sent­ing her hus­band's earn­ings.

The Cen­tre's at­tor­ney Neil Bis­nath went through each bill and in­voice at­tached to her claim and point­ed out that one re­ceipt was repli­cat­ed five times in her court doc­u­ments.

McKen­zie claimed that the du­pli­cates were com­piled by er­ror but the to­tal fig­ure made in the law­suit was cor­rect.

Bis­nath al­so ques­tioned the fact that none of the re­ceipts pre­sent­ed by McKen­zie showed that she paid for the med­ical treat­ment as they all stat­ed that the med­ical bills were paid by her health in­sur­ance pol­i­cy with her for­mer em­ploy­er RBC and through an­oth­er pol­i­cy held by her hus­band.

McKen­zie claimed that to­tal med­ical ex­pens­es were not cov­ered by the in­sur­ance poli­cies and she had to bor­row the rest from RBC by tak­ing a sec­ond mort­gage on her home. She ad­mit­ted that she failed to at­tach the mort­gage agree­ment to her court doc­u­ments but de­nied that her claim was ex­ag­ger­at­ed.

McKen­zie was al­so ques­tioned about her claim over her loss of earn­ings caused by her hus­band's death at age 55. She ad­mit­ted that af­ter his death, she took over co-own­er­ship of Smokey and Bun­ty Bar in St James and re­ceived his share of the prof­its.

She said that the on­ly time the es­tab­lish­ment was closed for busi­ness was in May 2015 when it was dam­aged by a fire and took six months to re­lo­cate.

Un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, McKen­zie ad­mit­ted that ac­cord­ing to her ex­pert wit­ness Dr Rober­to Heros, who tes­ti­fied on Tues­day, her hus­band had a life ex­pectan­cy of be­tween 16-18 months due to the ex­tent of his ill­ness. Her hus­band lived al­most 17 months from the time he was first di­ag­nosed, to when he died in De­cem­ber 2010.

The tri­al to­day when an­oth­er of McKen­zie's for­eign med­ical ex­perts is ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy from the US via video con­fer­enc­ing.

About the case

Ri­car­do "Smokey" McKen­zie, a brain can­cer pa­tient, re­ceived ex­ter­nal beam ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py at the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre for six weeks in 2009. In June 2010, McKen­zie, the co-own­er of Smokey and Bun­ty bar in St James, un­der­went an op­er­a­tion for swelling in his brain.

He was then tak­en to the Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, for fur­ther treat­ment be­fore he even­tu­al­ly died, lat­er that year.

In her law­suit filed sev­er­al months af­ter his death, his wid­ow Lisa is claim­ing that the Cen­tre was neg­li­gent for over-ra­di­a­tion of McKen­zie due to the mis­cal­i­bra­tion of its Linac ac­cel­er­a­tor dur­ing the pe­ri­od he was treat­ed.

She al­so con­tend­ed that the cen­tre failed to take rea­son­able steps to no­ti­fy McKen­zie or his fam­i­ly that there were a mis­cal­i­bra­tion and a pos­si­bil­i­ty that an over­dose of ra­di­a­tion may have oc­curred.


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