Wrongful Death

Ralph Beswick Jr. believes his father might still be alive if a city 911 dispatcher hadn't sent the wrong ambulance. Yesterday Beswick filed a wrongful-death/civil-rights lawsuit against the city, the dispatcher and the private ambulance company she worked for, claiming his father died because he failed to get emergency treatment in a timely manner. The city dispatcher, Julie Rodriguez, 32, has admitted forwarding a 911 call from Beswick's father's home to CareState Ambulance Inc., of Langhorne, the company she worked for part-time as an emergency medical technician.

The mother of a man shot to death by police last February at the end of a stolen-car chase in North Philadelphia filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Thursday against six city police officers. The Common Pleas Court lawsuit by Carolyn Moses, mother of Jamil Moses, was announced at the Center City law offices of Paul J. Hetznecker. Hetznecker called for an independent probe of the Feb. 8, 2011, encounter in which Moses, 24, was shot to death after police boxed in the car in which he was a passenger at 23d Street and Susquehanna Avenue.

The daughter of a woman whose death last year launched a state probe into treatment practices at the Montgomery County Geriatric and Rehabilitation Center has sued the Royersford facility for negligence and wrongful death. The lawsuit, filed in Montgomery County Court Tuesday on behalf of Carol A. Mosser of Lansdale, contends that the center's "negligent failure to act in accordance with [its] duties . . . to its patients" directly led to the death of Florence Mosser. The suit names as defendants the center, along with administrator Jean L. John, medical director Dr. John J. Maron and nursing director Melanie DeBlase.

When the police broke down the door to Holly Wnorowski's Edgewater Park apartment, all that was left of her nightgown was the smoldering tag. It was her first night in the apartment, and Wnorowski, 31, had planned a quiet celebration amid the unpacked boxes. She had taken out a candle in a glass jar as she relaxed watching television. The first couple of clicks of the long-stemmed butane lighter produced nothing, she told police. The next click on the triggerlike switch created an explosion that set her nightgown ablaze, according to police reports of the February 2001 fire in Burlington County.

A wrongful death lawsuit filed against the owner of an Exton group home after four people were killed in a fire has been settled out of court, attorneys said yesterday. The suit was brought against Ken-Crest Services by Ann Marie McConnell, whose mentally disabled son, Lawrence, 23, was trapped in the early morning blaze of Aug. 20, 1996. Also killed in the fire were John Brentnall, 57, and Tom Taylor, 37, and their caretaker, Kim Hunsinger, 23. Citing a confidentiality clause in the settlement, the lawyers would not disclose its terms.

Nearly 22 months after Anne Marie Fahey was reported missing, and seven months after her friends dedicated a wooden bench in Brandywine Park in her honor, her family has asked a court to declare her dead. "There are estate-related matters pertaining to Anne Marie that need to be addressed, and this is part of that process," said David Weiss, the Fahey family attorney. It is a necessary step, Weiss said yesterday, because Fahey's body has not been found. Consequently, a death certificate has not been issued.

In a tragic case predestined to yield no winners, former Bucks County day-care owner Rimma Shvartsman was acquitted yesterday of criminal charges in the death of a toddler she forgot in her sweltering van last summer. Shvartsman, 47, of Northampton, wept quietly against her daughter's shoulder as the midafternoon verdicts - not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child - were read in Bucks County Court. Gil and Lyudmila Slutsky, who had sat tearfully through three days of evidence, including their own wrenching testimony about the loss of their 2-year-old son, Daniel, were not present for the verdict.

A lawyer for the mother of a 7-year-old boy who drowned in a backyard pool while enrolled in what authorities have described as a fraudulently licensed day-care center filed a wrongful-death suit Wednesday against the operation's directors and the owner of the home where the child died. Isear Jeffcoat was swimming with 20 other children from Tianna's Terrific Tots on June 30 when he drowned in the deep end of a filthy, 9-foot-deep inground pool at a home in East Oak Lane. Tianna Edwards, 31, had left the children to swim at her mother's pool under the supervision of an employee with a lengthy criminal history that should have prohibited him from working with children, according to a state review of the case.

A Philadelphia judge has awarded $15 million in the death of a teen who fell into an abandoned mine shaft during a service trip to central Mexico. The Legal Intelligencer reports that Susan Patterson and Christopher Crane of West Chester have been awarded $15 million in survival and wrongful-death damages. Sixteen-year-old Taylor Crane died during a July 2007 trip organized by the defendant, Travel for Teens of Wayne. News reports say the teen died after he fell more than 500 feet into the shaft while playing tag with children on a visit to the Cinco Senores mine in Guanajuato state.

A settlement for $25,000 was awarded in a wrongful-death claim filed by the parents of a Lansdale boy who was killed when he was hit by a car in 1993. Montgomery County Court Judge William J. Furber awarded the settlement to Vong Nguong and Raing Noykathok, parents of Thaiva Nguong, who was 7 when he was killed. Thaiva Nguong was running across Walnut Street in Lansdale toward an ice cream truck about 9 p.m. July 13 when he ran into the street from between two parked cars and was struck and fatally injured by a car driven by a 17-year-old Harleysville youth.