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Fed lawsuit filed vs. city in Gosnell-related death

THE DAUGHTER of a patient killed at Kermit Gosnell's squalid West Philadelphia abortion clinic has filed a federal lawsuit against the city's Department of Public Health and Donald Schwarz, the health commissioner and deputy mayor for health and opportunity.

THE DAUGHTER of a patient killed at Kermit Gosnell's squalid West Philadelphia abortion clinic has filed a federal lawsuit against the city's Department of Public Health and Donald Schwarz, the health commissioner and deputy mayor for health and opportunity.

In her suit, Yashoda Gurung, the daughter of Karna Maya Mongar, alleges that the Department of Public Health "operates on a plan of inaction" and that its practice of "ignoring warning signs" cost her mother her life.

Mongar, 41, a refugee from Bhutan, died in November 2009 after she was overdosed with anesthetics at the Women's Medical Society clinic by an unlicensed staffer at the direction of Gosnell, according to the suit and the grand-jury report.

Gosnell and that staffer, Lynda Williams, were both charged with third-degree murder for Mongar's death. On Nov. 9, Williams pleaded guilty to a third-degree charge for Mongar's death and another count of third-degree murder for one of the seven babies allegedly killed at the clinic after it was born alive.

Williams is scheduled for sentencing in December and is expected to testify at Gosnell's trial.

The civil suit cites the failure of the Department of Public Health to act on concerns reported by an employee during a 2008 vaccine inspection at the clinic, including bloody fetuses kept in freezers just below chicken-pox vaccines.

Following the visit, the city suspended the clinic from the vaccine program but conducted no further investigations, the suit claims.

Just one month before Mongar's death, that same city employee returned to Gosnell's clinic and saw the same deplorable conditions, including expired vaccines and an unlicensed doctor.

The suit claims that the employee's supervisors didn't pass her reports on to anyone in the health department.

The suit cites Schwarz's testimony before the grand jury, in which he expressed regret for his department's inaction.

"The policy of inaction was not the discrete happenings of a few low-level employees," the civil suit claims. "Instead, this was a policy throughout the Philadelphia Department of Public Health."

Mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald declined to comment on pending litigation. An email and phone call to Gurung's attorney, Bernard Smalley, were not immediately returned yesterday.