Bernie Mac Widow Files Wrongful Death Suit
11:33 am, August 6th, 2010
Bernie Mac‘s widow has filed a wrongful death suit against the doctor who was caring for the comedian shortly before he died in 2008.
Rhonda McCullough, Mac’s wife of more than 30 years, claims his longtime dermatologist failed to recognize the star was in respiratory failure, and didn’t send him from a clinic to a hospital in a timely fashion, sparking a chain of events that ultimately led to his death a few weeks later.
Mac died at 50 years old due to complications from pneumonia. He was also a longtime sufferer of sarcoidosis, a lung disease.
Dr. Rene M. Earles, who treated Mac for lesions developed due to the sarcoidosis, acknowledged in a Chicago Sun-Times interview that Mac seemed sick when he came to the clinic, but he didn’t send the comedian to the hospital until consulting with a doctor Mac had seen earlier that day.
Earles, who is being sued for at least $50,000, thought he took sufficient care of Mac.
“He didn’t die the next day, he didn’t die in two days,” he explains. “He died in two weeks and he got over his original strain of pneumonia. He got another strain of pneumonia while he was in the hospital.”
“It was entirely devastating,” Earles said. “Look, Bernie was my patient. Bernie was my friend. We became extremely close — we were like brothers.”
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