Smokey's family to get $3.5M in compensation

WIDOW of businessman Ricardo “Smokey” McKenzie will receive substantially less than the $20 million in compensation she was seeking from the Brian Lara Cancer Treatment Centre for her husband’s death in 2010.

McKenzie’s widow Lisa and his daughters, Ornella and Daniella, in June, were successful in their gross medical negligence claim against Medcorp Ltd and the Cancer Centre of the Caribbean Ltd – operators of BLCTC.

The McKenzie family will receive a little over $3.5 million in compensation.

Justice Mira Dean-Armorer had found the BLCTC negligent in McKenzie’s death because of an over-calibrated radiation machine by 13.9 per cent causing patients to receive an overdose of radiation.

McKenzie died on December 21, 2010, and his wife filed the case against the centre for medical expenses and $16 million for loss of earnings and the US$567,000 spent on his medical care in the United States before his death.

At the time of delivering her ruling, the judge did not give her decision on the quantum of compensation and sought additional information from attorneys.

She did so on Tuesday at the Hall of Justice in Port of Spain.

In her assessment, Dean-Armorer ordered Medcorp Ltd and BLCTC to pay to the McKenzie family a total of $3,531,325.

Doctors who treated McKenzie in the US concluded he died of radiation necrosis caused by a radiation overdose. McKenzie, 55, was being treated for brain cancer.

He was diagnosed in 2009 and received external beam radiation therapy at the BLCTC for six weeks in September, that year.

In June 2010, McKenzie underwent an operation for swelling in his brain.

He was then taken to the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, for further treatment before he eventually died, later that year.