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IN MEDICAL MALPRACTICE LAWSUIT
No hearing on Carolinian marriage custom issue as OAG withdraws motion
The Superior Court did not have to hold a hearing on marriage customs among Carolinians after the Office of the Attorney General withdrew its motion to dismiss one of the claims in a couple’s medical malpractice lawsuit.
The evidentiary hearing was scheduled to begin last Tuesday, but assistant attorney general Christopher Timmons, counsel for the CNMI government, withdrew the government’s motion to dismiss Pedro Pua’s loss of consortium claim without admission of fact.
Timmons also expressed the government’s full reservation of the right to defend against Pua’s loss of consortium claim by dispositive motion or at trial.
Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho vacated the evidentiary hearing.
The issue of Carolinian customary relationships was brought up in the government’s motion to dismiss Pua’s complaint for loss of consortium. Pua’s co-plaintiff is her common-law husband, Remedio Elameto.
Elameto and Pua are suing the CNMI government and two former Commonwealth Health Center doctors Rajee Iyer and Gary Ramsey for medical malpractice, bad faith, and emotional distress and loss of consortium.
Elameto claimed that a surgical team at CHC allegedly left a 15-centimeter-long surgical clamp in her abdomen during a surgery at CHC on Saipan in August 2000.
Elameto disclosed that it was in June 2014 or almost 14 years later when the surgical clamp was discovered and removed at Guam Memorial Hospital.
