Lawsuit claims cancer care too little, now too late

Filing contends patient undermedicated

BRIDGEPORT — A former college hoops star from Westport is dying from cancer because he couldn’t get proper care at Norwalk Hospital, a lawsuit claims.

Robert “Bob” McCurdy, a former All-American and the nation’s leading scorer during his senior season of 1974-75 at the University of Richmond, was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2018. A lawsuit filed Tuesday in Superior Court here against Norwalk Hospital, the Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital and the owner of the hospital, Nuvance Health, claims McCurdy’s was deprived of the care that would keep him alive.

Specifically, the lawsuit claims that because of a mistake by Whittingham and its staff, McCurdy received only 25 percent of the prescribed dose of an essential chemotherapy drug.

He was supposed to get a total of 4,000 mg of the chemical drug over an eight-day period each of the past two months, according to the suit, and only got 1,000 mg each month.

McCurdy is being represented by Peter Dreyer of the local law firm Silver Golub and Teitell.

A press release from Dreyer’s law firm states McCurdy’s treatment had been affected by the pandemic.

“Like many other cancer patients, Mr. McCurdy is immunocompromised and is in the high risk group for severe COVID-19 symptoms. Thus, he has been unable to see his primary oncologist in New York City,” the release states.

“Sadly, we cannot change what happened to Bob,” Dreyer said through the release. “Patients seek treatment at Norwalk Hospital’s Whittingham Cancer Center because it has promoted itself as an affiliate of Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the implication to the public is that they provide the same preeminent cancer treatment as MSK. However, despite this advertised relationship, the cancer care Mr. McCurdy received at Whittingham was poor and will cost him his life.”

“Patient safety is our top priority. We do not comment on active litigation,” said Andrea Rynn, spokesperson for Nuvance Health.

The suit states that as a result of the failure to give the full dose of the chemotherapy drug, McCurdy’s cancer advanced and metastasized, requiring radical surgery as well as additional rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and immunosuppressive therapy. The suit states the treatments would have been unnecessary had Whittingham merely administered the prescribed chemotherapy drugs.

According to the lawsuit, McCurdy is now likely to die from a cancer that should have been cured.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.