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Hospital Says It Didn't Commit Fraud in 'Cancer Cure' Case

A New York hospital has denied committing any fraud with respect to a treatment that it allegedly advertised as being 95 percent effective in curing all types of cancer.

Staten Island University Hospital filed an answer Dec. 19 to an amended complaint lodged by Elizabeth Ryan, whose husband died of pancreatic cancer after undergoing the hospital's widely advertised "body radiosurgery" treatment instead of the therapy his doctors had recommended.

Thomas Ryan, 67, died of the disease Oct. 2, 2002, after undergoing the treatment at SIUH from June to September of that year.

The defendants stopped offering the treatment in 2002.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly forms of the disease. There is no known cure, and most patients die within a year of diagnosis.

Elizabeth Ryan sued the hospital and Dr. Gilbert Lederman in 2004, alleging their aggressive advertising convinced her husband to leave his Florida home and abandon conventional treatment. She filed an amended complaint Nov. 29, 2007, adding a claim for lack of informed consent.

Thomas Ryan subjected himself to the defendants' "grossly negligent and unnecessary treatment, which shortened his life span and wrongfully enriched the defendants," the suit says.

The amended complaint alleges fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices under N.Y. Gen. Bus. Laws §§ 349 and 350, and medical malpractice.

In responding to the 57-page amended complaint, SIUH denied every allegation and asserted as an affirmative defense that the complaint failed to state a claim for fraud or deceit and that Thomas Ryan's injuries were caused "in whole or in part" by his own actions.

Other similar suits are pending against the same defendants, including one brought by the families of 12 Italian citizens who came to the United States for the treatment and later died. Gotlin v. Lederman, No. 05-01899 (E.D.N.Y.).

In 2005 Elizabeth Ryan moved, for the third time, to compel the hospital to respond to a set of interrogatories, including requests for the records of other patients who had undergone the procedure. Ryan said she wanted to ascertain the hospital's actual success rate for the procedure.

The court granted the motion in December 2006, saying the information Ryan seeks is relevant to her false-advertising claims because it directly addresses the issue of whether the defendants' claim of a 95 percent success rate was materially misleading.

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