By Kelsey Durham
A Flushing family has filed a lawsuit against St. John’s University in Jamaica Estates after their son was killed last year when he came in contact with a lethal drug during an externship where the school had placed him, according to a court summons.
The family of James Yoo filed a civil suit May 28 claiming that the 22-year-old College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences student died as a result of being “improperly exposed to dangerous drugs, chemicals and mixtures of chemicals and drugs” while working as an intern at Rockwell Compounding Associates Inc. in Rye, N.Y., to complete a graduation requirement for SJU’s doctorate program.
Joshua Gropper, the attorney representing the Yoo family, said the suit was filed in Queens County Supreme Court in response to what the family believes was the school’s failure to conduct a thorough background check on Rockwell, which is also named as a co-defendant in the suit, before placing Yoo under their supervision.
A spokesman from St. John’s said the university would not comment on pending litigation, and Rockwell could not be reached for comment this week.
The lawsuit alleges that on Feb. 7, 2013, Yoo’s skin came in contact with a “potent and dangerous drug” called Fentanyl, causing him to collapse. Yoo was rushed to a hospital and died Feb. 13, 2013, less than a week after he was exposed to the drug, and his death certificate lists “Fentanyl intoxication via transdermal absorption” as the cause of death, the lawsuit says.
The court summons said Rockwell and its owner, Steven Consentino, had been under investigation in the past by the state Board of Regents for unethical practices, including unlawful manufacturing of drugs and compounding medicines without individual patient consent.
The document also states that neither Consentino nor his company was registered to manufacture drugs at the time Yoo was placed there for his externship, which Gropper said St. John’s would have discovered had they conducted a proper background check.
“The fact is that the pharmacy school placed this student in what we believe to be a position of peril by using this lab,” Gropper said. “They have a long history of suspensions and other issues and I think if St. John’s had done due diligence and thought about the safety of their students a little more, no students would have ever been placed there.”
The summons filed by the Yoo family and their attorney is seeking punitive damages plus interest, but Gropper said the Yoo family did not specify a monetary amount they are asking for with the lawsuit. He said his parents are simply looking to bring attention to the issue.
“Quite frankly, they’re doing it a lot more to change the policies than to get a financial windfall,” he said. “It comes down to reasonableness. The school has a duty to act in a reasonable manner.”
Gropper said he was waiting for each defendant to respond to the complaint against them before the lawsuit could go any further.
Reach reporter Kelsey Durham at 718-260-4573 or by e-mail at kdurham@cnglocal.com.
