Family of Journalist Who Died Hours After Childbirth Settles Harlem Hospital Malpractice Case for $3 Million

Amy Lam, a 34-year-old journalist who had recently moved to New York from Hong Kong, was living in West Harlem and expecting her second child in August 2016. She planned to deliver at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in downtown Manhattan, but labor came on suddenly and she gave birth at home, with a neighbor helping. Her attorney later said the baby was fine.

Paramedics found that Lam's placenta had not been expelled and recommended a hospital. They offered her husband, Chung Kiu Kwok, two choices: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University about two miles uptown, or Harlem Hospital Center. They went to Harlem Hospital because it was closer. Emergency medical records noted that Lam was alert and oriented, and she took a selfie with her husband in the back of the ambulance.

After doctors removed her placenta, Lam's blood pressure began to drop. What followed was a cascade of procedures: more than 20 blood transfusions and at least five physicians treating her over roughly 10 hours. One of them was Dr. Thomas J. Byrne. Her hospital records show he performed an ultrasound and prescribed methergine, a drug used for postpartum hemorrhage. When that did not work, another doctor opened her abdomen and found severe internal bleeding. Byrne then performed a hysterectomy, removing her uterus and at least one ovary. A vascular surgeon kept operating but could not stop the bleeding.

Lam died about 11 hours after giving birth in her apartment. Her medical records show she had lost her entire blood volume. The New York City medical examiner later wrote that her aorta, the body's main artery, had dissected and ruptured in the operating room, and the autopsy report noted it was not clear whether the rupture resulted from the care she received or occurred on its own.

In 2017 the family sued, with Susan Karten representing them. The complaint named Harlem Hospital, New York City Health + Hospitals, the public agency that runs it, and five physicians, Byrne among them. In court records, attorneys for the hospital described what happened to Lam as a rare and unforeseeable lethal event. Karten and her medical experts argued that Lam could have been saved if the doctors had acted differently and worked to identify the source of the bleeding sooner. A signed expert affirmation from an OB-GYN who testified for the family, whose name was redacted from the court records, stated that Byrne 'did not act in accord with acceptable practices via his performance of a hysterectomy' and that the surgery was not medically necessary. The affirmation added that performing the hysterectomy 'instead of gaining vascular control of her bleeding was a departure from good and accepted practices, which led to further delay in treating her.'

The case settled for $3 million in 2020. New York City Health + Hospitals declined to comment on it, and Karten later told reporters the settlement included only the agency, not the individual physicians, which meant no payment was recorded in the doctors' files in the National Practitioner Data Bank.

Karten said she first learned of Byrne's history while deposing him in the case. New York regulators had stripped Byrne of his medical license in 1991, after a state investigation found him guilty of gross negligence, gross incompetence and obtaining a license fraudulently, and after the health commissioner labeled him an imminent danger to patients. He went on to practice in New Mexico and Oklahoma, and New York restored his license without restrictions in 2014. A Gothamist investigation published in 2023 found that patients and families across several states had filed nearly two dozen lawsuits over his career alleging he negligently caused injury or death. Kwok filed complaints against three of the physicians who treated his wife with New York's Office of Professional Medical Conduct, and a letter dated September 11, 2023 confirmed an investigator had been assigned to review them.