The Votes Are In!
2024 Readers' Choice is back, bigger and better than ever!
View Winners → Top Posts Aug 31, 2021
Photo courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr
by
share with
The husband and three children of a Beverly Hills woman who died in 2020 due to an alleged alarm malfunction on the ventilator machine that supplied her oxygen are suing the manufacturer and the distributor of the device.
Jaklin Rasekhnia died about 12:55 p.m. Aug. 30, 2020, of cardiopulmonary arrest, despite life-saving efforts by paramedics, according to the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit brought Monday by Rasekhnia’s husband, Masoud Kohan, and children, Josephine, Joseph and George Kohan.
The suit does not state Rasekhnia’s age and the family’s attorney, John C. Carpenter, could not be immediately reached.
The defendants are Philips North America LLC, the designer and manufacturer of the Trilogy 100 ventilator used by Rasekhnia; Philips subsidiary Respironics Inc. and Apguard Medical Inc., a home respiratory medical equipment distributor. The suit filed Monday alleges strict liability and negligence and seeks unspecified damages.
In October 2019, Rasekhnia began using a ventilator machine to sleep so she could get oxygen upon which she relied upon for life, the suit states.
Rasekhnia was at home on South Rexford Drive on a summer night in 2020, with her husband as well as children Joseph and Josephine Kohan for a Shabat dinner, a longstanding family tradition in which the evening featured music, love and laughter, according to the suit. George Kohan was unable to attend, the suit states.
“At one point in the evening, Rasekhnia lifted her head and moved her lips, a gesture her family knew was Rasekhnia thanking God,” the suit states.
The Shabat dinner would be Rasekhnia’s last with her family in her home, the suit states.
Josephine Kohan, who lived with her parents and was her mother’s primary caretaker, removed her mother’s feeding tube for about an hour to give the woman her medications, then put her to bed and began operating the ventilator, the suit states. Josephine got up about 4 the next morning and changed her mother’s diaper and saw that the ventilator appeared to operating normally, the suit states.
Josephine was awakened about 8 a.m. by the sound of oxygen being released, so she rushed to her mother’s side and saw that the ventilator hose had detached from the machine, the suit states.
Josephine saw that her mother had “turned blue from head to toe” because of the lack of oxygen and the alarm that should have notified them of any issue with the flow of oxygen never sounded, the suit alleges.
“As a result, Rasekhnia had been deprived of critical oxygen she depended upon to live for an amount of time that permanently injured Rasekhnia and caused her death,” according to the suit.
Josephine called 911 and rushed out the door of her family home for assistance from her neighbors, one of whom was a registered nurse, the suit states. Paramedics arrived and gave Rasekhnia CPR, but she died later at a hospital, the suit states.
