FIGHT OVER JOHN RITTER’S TRAGIC DEATH
MYSTERY still shrouds the death of Three’s Company legend John Ritter, who died at age 54 on Sept. 11, 2003, under very strange circumstances.
Ritter was celebrating his daughter Stella’s fifth birthday on the set of his hit sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter when he started vomiting, became faint and suffered excruciating chest pains.
Rushed to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center at 6 p.m., he was given tests and a chest X-ray and prescribed aspirin and anti-nausea medicine.
Around 7:15 p.m., a test convinced the doctor John had had a heart attack. He was given the standard treatment of anti-coagulants.
Tragically, this can worsen an aortic dissection, the rupture of a heart artery, a hard-to-diagnose
condition he’d actually suffered.
He was pronounced dead at 10:48 p.m. No autopsy was performed because doctors convinced his second wife, Amy Yasbeck, of the cause of death, insiders said at the time.
She came to believe the lack of an autopsy was part of a coverup, hiding gross negligence.
“The doctors told it to me like I was five,” Yasbeck says. “The truth is, it’s a lot more complicated and it’s a lot more sad.”
Yasbeck later sued for $67 million and got $14 million, including $9 million from the hospital.
But a jury decided the doctors who treated Ritter were not negligent because the fatal condition was difficult to detect.
Amy still believes the medics missed signs that could have saved his life and instead gave him treatment that proved fatal.
“You can’t treat my kid’s dad for something and kill him in the process,” she insists.