North Dakota physician maligned in the press gets an apology

In the Courts. By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Nov. 10, 2003.

North Dakota pediatric neurosurgeon Mark Monasky, MD, was taken aback when friends at his Sunday-school class asked him if he had seen the story on the top of the front page of The Bismarck Tribune.

He hadn't.

But the questions reminded him that a reporter from the paper had contacted him a few weeks earlier about a medical malpractice lawsuit he settled shortly before it was scheduled to go to trial.

Dr. Monasky said the reporter had asked if he had any comment on the settlement and he told her he couldn't talk about it because the agreement had been sealed.

"It was a 15-second conversation," said Dr. Monasky, adding that he did not think the paper could write something because the settlement was sealed. He also had seen the judge ask the reporter to leave the courtroom before the settlement was discussed.

Dr. Monasky said the reporter did not ask him to respond to specific allegations in the lawsuit. Consequently, he said, he was shocked to see a nearly 1,900-word story splashed across the front page of his hometown paper.

But he was more upset with the way he believed -- and numerous colleagues and readers who wrote into the paper believed -- he was portrayed in the story. The story used court records and interviews to detail a case brought on behalf of a baby on whom Dr. Monasky had performed cranial remodeling surgery. The baby woke up after surgery and was stable but experienced problems in the recovery room that resulted in brain damage.