Top 10 Scariest Celeb Malpractice Cases

Despite all their fortune and fame, even celebrities aren’t immune from becoming victims of medical malpractice. In fact, given their notoriety, their stories are often scarier than most! Here are the ten most shocking celebrity malpractice cases.

Ed McMahon—A staple of “The Tonight Show” in the days of Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon took a fall in 2008 but was discharged from the hospital with a clean bill of health. He actually had a broken neck that would take two spinal operations to fix.

Dana Carvey—Imagine having a major medical procedure done on the wrong artery. That’s exactly what happened to SNL’s Dana Carvey, who went under the knife of an apparently dyslexic doctor during a heart bypass surgery.

DJ AM—After surviving a plane crash, DJ AM was put on pain medication for the burns he suffered during the ordeal. This turned out to be a deadly prescription for the ex-addict, who would backslide into drugs and eventually overdose in 2009. According to his mother, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit, the hospital’s addictive medicine was to blame.

Julie Andrews—Julie Andrews gave us one of the most iconic songs in musical history. (We’re talking about “The Sound of Music,” as you probably guessed.) However, she didn’t have much to sing about after a botched throat surgery left her with permanent damage and ended her career forever.

Freddie Prinze Sr.—Freddie Prinze Sr. committed suicide at the tender age of 22. The catch? He was taking doctor-prescribed Quaaludes at the time, a fact his mother took to court and used to win a $1 million settlement. It couldn’t compare to the life of her son, but it was a win for both grieving mothers and malpractice lawyers, like the medical malpractice attorneys in West Virginia who fight against such negligence.

Donda West—You may know her as the mother of Kayne West, but to her doctor, she was his third malpractice case. Unfortunately, hers ended tragically when a routine cosmetic surgery took her life in 2007.

John Ritter—An X-ray would have found the problem and saved his life – or so his lawyers said. However, the hospital denied the procedure, and John Ritter died of an aortic dissection after being misdiagnosed with heart attack symptoms.

Michael Woods—The brother of actor James Woods, Michael suffered a fatal heart attack in 2006. However, he was in a hospital at the time, and he was simply left unattended on a gurney in the middle of a hallway.

Thomas and Zoe Quaid—A simple comma almost took the lives of twin newborns in 2007. Despite a healthy birth to parents Dennis Quaid and Kimberly Buffington, the two-week-old twins were given 10,000 units of a blood-thinning drug instead of simply 10. Thankfully, the mistake was caught in time to save them.

Michael Jackson—Everyone knows that Michael Jackson died of a drug overdose in 2009 when his physician prescribed him extensive and unnecessary medication. Fewer realize that this malpractice was judged so severe his doctor actually went to prison for manslaughter. For the nature of the case and the death of the King of Pop, this is easily the No. 1 scariest case of celebrity malpractice.