People watch too many shows like Greys Anatomy and ER. People are living long lives due to the advances of medicine. Too long actually. There are many staying alive on machines because no one had the courage to pull the plug and now they suffer needlessly. Also tons of elderly lying in nursing homes with bed sores and God knows what else.
Americans do not deal with death very well. NEWSFLASH: Were all gonna die. Expecting doctors and nurses to perform miracles everyday is ridiculous. John Ritter died because he didn't follow up and take the Doctor's advice. Sometimes it is just your time to go.....

Let's be crystal clear. The punitive awards in these lawsuits against corporations are always paid indirectly by millions of Americans.

So when Ms Ritter wants another $43 million above the $14 million, she is essentially saying, ”I want millions of average Americans to pay me so that I can live in the extreme lap of luxury never working another day in my life while I grieve.”

This why our system is so screwed up!

Interesting comments from people who stated the Doctors were "murderers" and wished that they had been able to help sue them.
Imagine that you spent 4 years of med school and 8 years of post grad training to become a specialist physician.
Imagine that your job is seeing and treating people from all walks of life with medical problems. Imagine that any time one of them has a bad outcome, and you were involved in their care, that you could be sued for millions of dollars, whether or not you had anything to do with the bad outcome. Imagine that the outcome of the trial and the jury award would be decided by a group of people with no medical knowledge.
Every physician (and nurse, and xray tech, etc, because they get sued also) in practice in this country works in that atmosphere. (It is true that it is a bit more fair in states with a medical review panel, but there are very few of these)
It's no surprise that practicing physicians are retiring early, moving to less litigation-happy states, refusing to accept free care or medicaid patients, refusing to take trauma call, rescinding obstetric privileges, rescinding intracranial neurosurgery privileges, leaving patient care altogether to go into managment, etc. It's no surprise that highly qualified and intelligent students are no longer to deciding to chose medicine as a career in this country.
I would imagine many prospective physicians would be scared off by comments such as "they can be lucky they didn't deal with me as the family's lawyer", "once again, doctors get away with murder" (right, they actually meant to take his life, and most docs actually really want to kill you, not help you). You would be singing a different tune if your family member died of an intracranial hemorrhage because there was no neurosurgeon available with intracranial privileges within several hundred miles.
As a physician who has been treating patients since 1992, I live with this litigious atmosphere every day.

Many medical problems mimic the signs and symptoms of a acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). Everything from hyperventilation, to hypertensive crisis, to an aortic dissection. An aortic dissection is extremely rare and usually fatal wthin 2-3 minutes. They are almost always fatal and almost never get any treatment at all. Usually the paramdics or family are the last ones to see them alive and they do not make it to surgery.

The medical profession is not an exact science. You cannot say "this and this happened so this is unequivically this." It's not that easy. You have to try the most plausible cause first and try to rule that out. Then go on to the next plausible cause and rule it out. An aortic dissetion would be down that list as it's rare.

The doctors were not negligent if they were doing everything prudent and what any doctor would do in the same situation.

For all those who wish Ritter's family had won another $67 million in addition to the $14 million they already received, I have one question. Who is going to pay for that? The answer, of course, is that we pay. The little people, who already pay too much for health insurance, ultimately pay for these excessive verdicts with higher premiums, because the doctors must charge more to cover their higher malpractice premiums. This was not a case of an ordinary guy getting a million bucks to support their family. 67 million was an obscene figure. If the doctors screwed up, hold them accountable, but 67 +14 million is not accountability, it is greed. And remember, the lawyers get a third!

At least Ritter's case went to trial, unlike the vast majority of malpractice cases, where there isn't enough money to divide to bother making the assertion of a valid malpractice complaint in court.

Thank you, jurors. Well, 6 of you anyway.

$14M from prior settlements is enough. MORE than enough.

The man was mid-heart attack, and the doc tried to SAVE HIS LIFE !!!.

What was the doc supposed to do had he been told Ritter's system was fragile... WITHHOLD treatment !?!

6 of them got the idea. The other 3? Cases in point for what's wrong with the jury system in technical, let alone civil, trials.

Despite the infinite testimony of friends and relatives about what a great guy John Ritter was, it seems like the jury was able to stick to the facts and render a fair verdict. I got the sense that perhaps his wife was so emotionally distraught about losing her husband that her judgement may have been kind of fuzzy when bringing this case. Its always a shock to lose someone in the prime of their life but that doesn't always mean that someone is at fault. She'd already rec'd 14 million for gods sake . She should thank her lucky stars she is so priviledged and she has a daughter by John to remember him by. Time to move on...

Are you kidding? Sounds to me like the hospital/doctors were totally at fault. It wasn't the clogged arteries that he didn't follow up on that killed him. It was the TORN AORTA. Clearly, the ordered x-ray should have been done. That's negligence right there.

People are so quick to call plaintiffs in these lawsuits greedy. You have to take it on a case by case basis. This sounds like they Ritter family put a strong case forward.

I miss John Ritter. What a sad loss of such a wonderful man and talented actor.

And so, once again, doctors get away with murder. What else is new?

Ritter was just one of the 100,000 people who die EVERY YEAR because of medical mistakes. Watch Dennis Quaid talk about the epidemic this constitutes on Sunday's "60 Minutes."

What greedy, selfish, people Ritter's family is. He was such a good, nice guy, I will bet he is turning in his grave. Why doesn't his golddigging wife get a job, rahther than trying to bilk hospitals and the poor doctors who did theior best to try to save John's life. Aren't most of his children grown? Get a job, rather than trying to sue your way into fortune. Hasn't your family been priviledged enough? Try to exist on what ordinary Amerians have to, with outsourcing jobs, places hiring two workers part time so that they don't have to pay benefits, and trying to decide between gas and clothing and food after paying the bills, These Ritter's REALLY take the cake! Thank goodness the jury say through this sham game. I'll bet the foundation Amy is trying to start in John's name will be a nice tax shelter for her millions.

people like this selfish, greedy family affect everyone in this country. It is disgusting cases like this that cause malpractice premiums to skyrocket and drive Doctors away. The MD degree no longer attracts the best and brightest American students as the field has become painful to be in. Many areas in the country do not have certain services because the specialists were driven out by malpractice.

Years and years of cholesterol buildup and hardening of the arteries finally culminated in a vascular catastrophe for Mr. Ritter and the family wants to hold a Doctor responsible for the whole loss. "Ohhhh...he could have earned 60 million dollars and those doctors took that fortune away from us". Its really too bad that the family already gained 14 million dollars. If I was those doctors I would counter sue. Disgusting people like this have often made me want to quit my profession as a Physician

Thank god!!!

I am/was appalled at the level of greed & pathetic pandering displayed by the family & their high-power legal team. He was a multi-millionaire to begin with...they won $14 million from the hospital, and then they try to ruin 2 doctors' lives and get another $67 million.

Then they trot out a bunch of celeb friends who have NO bearing on this case say what a great guy he was & sway the jury, and try to blame emergency workers who did all they could, knowing what they knew (and could have known).

Luckily, the jury saw through these manipulitive tacktics & saw the core of the matter; Ritter was told to see a specialist 2 years ago...he did not, and he died.