Settlement in works in Ritter suit

The family of John Ritter has reached a tentative settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Burbank medical center where the actor died, an attorney for the hospital said.

“There is an agreement in principle,” attorney Rory Hernandez said Wednesday. Hearings will be held to finalize the agreement, he said, with the next court session set for today.

Hernandez declined to disclose details of the settlement. Court documents filed by the hospital on March 10 indicate that Ritter’s widow, Amy Yasbeck, and his four children “are potentially receiving a large monetary settlement in this case.”

In their lawsuit, Ritter’s children and widow accuse Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, the Burbank Emergency Medical Group and several doctors of negligence and medical malpractice. They are seeking damages in excess of $25 million.

Ritter, who skyrocketed to prominence with the hit series “Three’s Company,” was starring in the ABC sitcom “8 Simple Rules ... for Dating My Teenage Daughter” when he collapsed on the show’s set on Sept. 11, 2003.

The 54-year-old actor was taken to the hospital emergency room around 6 p.m. that day, complaining of chest pressure, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The suit alleges that Ritter was misdiagnosed as having a heart attack and claims the death could have been prevented if proper procedures had been followed: “Due to the failure to properly diagnose Mr. Ritter’s condition, and the improper and unnecessary procedures performed ... Mr. Ritter died at 10:48 p.m.”

A doctor retained by two defendants in the suit saw things differently, saying the actor’s death was already “a reasonable medical probability” when he entered the hospital.

“By the time Mr. Ritter was presented to the [hospital’s] emergency department on Sept. 11, 2003, it was too late to save his life,” Dr. John W. Renner, a radiologist, concluded in a declaration on file as part of the suit.

Court documents filed as part of the lawsuit describe a hospital scene in which doctors first struggled to figure out what was causing Ritter’s health problems and then scrambled to revive him as his condition worsened.

About two hours after he was admitted, a catheterization procedure showed that Ritter was not suffering from coronary artery disease but that he had a thoracic aortic dissection -- a condition in which there is bleeding into and along the wall of the aorta, the major artery from the heart.

Doctors performed CPR and used a defibrillator as the actor slid into cardiac arrest. Ritter’s chest was opened and internal cardiac massage was also tried without success.

Ritter’s son Jason, who is also an actor, later spoke about the family’s surprise to learn of his condition. In an interview last year with hosts Mark and Brian on L.A. radio station KLOS-FM (95.5), Jason Ritter said family members weren’t aware of the heart condition until the night of the actor’s death.

“It is something that for the most part it’s hard to detect before, and one of the problems is, is that everyone thinks it’s a heart attack,” said Jason Ritter, according to a transcript of the radio interview contained in the court files.

Jason Ritter said there was a “kind of legacy” of heart problems on his father’s side of the family, noting that his grandfather, singer Tex Ritter, had died of a heart attack, as had his father before that. “It was only this time where we realized, ‘Oh, none of them were probably heart attacks,’ ” he told the radio hosts. “It was just this passed-down thing.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.