Judge seals portions of lung cancer suit

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, April, 2008 | by John Sullivan and Josh Goldstein Inquirer Staff Writers

A federal judge yesterday sealed portions of a lawsuit that alleges the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and other parties should have known that the lungs they transplanted into a Newark, N.J., man were diseased. Tony Grier, 43, was dying from a rare lung disease in 2005 when he received two donor lungs from a 31-year-old Lancaster woman who died in a car accident, according to court filings.

Grier died six months later after undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer that was in the organs. The plaintiffs' lawyers contend that the hospital should have known the lungs were cancerous because the donor had smoked for 16 years. The suit was filed by Grier's mother in May 2007 in federal court in Newark and later transferred to Philadelphia. Yesterday, a judge here...