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Judge awards $3.9M in suit against Gosnell

The daughter of a woman who died in the abortion doctor’s care had sued Gosnell and his clinic in 2011.

Kermit Gosnell: Three life sentences. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)
Kermit Gosnell: Three life sentences. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)Read more

A PHILADELPHIA judge has awarded nearly $4 million to the daughter of a woman who died while under the care of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell.

Karnamaya Mongar, 41, of Virginia, died in 2009 at Gosnell's clinic, the Women's Medical Society, on Lancaster Avenue near 38th Street in Powelton Village.

Her daughter, Yashoda Devi Gurung, also of Virginia, as the administrator of her mother's estate, filed a lawsuit against Gosnell and his clinic in 2011.

Following an assessment-of-damages hearing last month, Common Pleas Judge Jacqueline Allen earlier this week awarded Gurung $3.9 million.

The award consists of $650,000 in compensatory damages and $3.25 million in punitive damages. It is not clear if Gurung will actually receive any money.

Gosnell's attorney, Jack McMahon, told the Legal Intelligencer that neither Gosnell nor his former clinic is insured, and that Gosnell has few assets.

Gosnell, 74, is in state prison serving three consecutive life sentences after having been convicted by a jury in May 2013 of three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive, then killed, during abortion procedures at his clinic.

He also was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Mongar's drug-overdose death, and was sentenced to a consecutive 2 1/2-to-five-year prison sentence.

Gurung's attorney, Bernard Smalley Sr., did not return a phone call or email from the Daily News seeking comment yesterday.

McMahon, who also did not return a call or email from the Daily News, told the Legal Intelligencer that liability was not contested because Gosnell had been found guilty under a higher standard of proof at the criminal trial.

He told the law journal that he agreed with Allen's assessment of the compensatory damages, but contended that she should not have awarded punitive damages.

Investigators have said that Gosnell and his unqualified staff routinely performed illegal late-term abortions, sometimes killing infants who were born alive by severing their spinal cords with scissors.

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