Attorneys Silenced in Lakin Death Lawsuit

Two days of settlement negotiations in the medical malpractice suit brought by the family of community college Chancellor Thomas G. Lakin ended Wednesday with a judge ordering the attorneys for Lakin’s widow, a Thousand Oaks hospital and six doctors not to discuss the case.

None of the attorneys or the judge would say if a settlement had been reached in the case filed earlier this year against Los Robles Regional Medical Center and the doctors who treated the ailing 50-year-old marathon runner as the so-called flesh-eating bacteria coursed through his body.

The suit alleged that the doctors and the hospital made wrong decisions and failed to diagnose the infection, known technically as necrotizing fasciitis, in time to save Lakin’s life.

Lakin died Nov. 27. He had been admitted and discharged from Los Robles twice during the two days preceding his death.

Lakin’s widow, Karen, and four daughters had sought more than $3 million in the suit filed in January.

In the past week, talks between attorneys heated up as a settlement appeared imminent. The dozen or so lawyers involved in the case spent Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons shuttling in an out of the chambers of Ventura County Superior Court Judge Joe D. Hadden. Karen Lakin sat in on both days of negotiations.

Late Wednesday, the attorneys emerged from a closed-door meeting with Hadden, shaking hands. A court reporter and Hadden’s clerk also attended the meeting.

All parties declined to discuss the case.

“The judge ordered us not to talk,” said Sandra Tyson, one of Lakin’s two attorneys.

Lakin was the chancellor of the three-campus Ventura County Community College District.