Joan Rivers's executors sued the Manhattan clinic where she stopped breathing during a throat procedure and settled in 2016 for an undisclosed sum

On 28 August 2014 Joan Rivers, 81, went to Yorkville Endoscopy in Manhattan for a laryngoscopy and upper endoscopy under propofol sedation to check voice changes and acid reflux. She stopped breathing during the procedure. She died at Mount Sinai Hospital on 4 September 2014 without waking. On 16 October 2014 the city medical examiner gave the cause as brain damage from lack of oxygen and called it a "predictable complication of medical therapy." On 10 November 2014 federal officials reported that the clinic had failed to respond to her deteriorating vital signs and had performed a procedure without her consent. The federal Department of Health and Human Services, citing a state inspection, said two procedures were done by an ear, nose and throat surgeon who was not on the clinic's medical staff. On 26 January 2015 her daughter Melissa Rivers and two other executors of her estate sued the clinic and the doctors who treated her in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The suit alleges reckless and negligent treatment, violation of her privacy and abandonment when she needed emergency care. It alleges that the medical director, Dr. Lawrence Cohen, photographed her while she was sedated, that her own throat doctor, Gwen Korovin, was not authorized to be in the procedure room, and that a "code blue" was called at 9:28 a.m. and 911 was dialed at 9:40 a.m. The family's lawyer Jeffrey Bloom said the doctors treated her "as a groupie." Korovin's lawyer, William Lewis, said: "What happened was she never left the room." HNGN reported that Cohen denied taking the photographs. In May 2016 the case settled for an undisclosed sum. Melissa Rivers said "those culpable for her death have accepted responsibility." A clinic spokesperson said the parties settled "to avoid protracted litigation." Status: settled May 2016; terms confidential.