Having never been told how or why her sister died, Tammy Reed turned to the Internet for answers until she was slapped with a lawsuit and warned to keep quiet.
Nevada Imaging Centers filed a lawsuit against Reed and her parents in May 2005, or, according to Clark County coroner records, about 16 months after Reed's sister, Tina Lockwood McCarley, died after a visit to the medical testing center.
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McCarley's death was one of the rare cases in which the coroner's office listed the cause of death "undetermined."
Unlike most of the nearly 140,000 civil cases filed in Clark County District Court between 2000 and 2006, Nevada Imaging's pending lawsuit against the Lockwood family was sealed by a judge the same day it was filed at the courthouse, according to court records.
The case is just one of 115 cases sealed by judges since 2000 and just one of many sealed cases that involve physicians or medical service agencies in Clark County.
Because a judge sealed the case, the allegations leveled against the grieving family and the financial damages sought by Nevada Imaging are confidential and not available to the public.
Also hidden are the name of the judge who sealed the case, those of the attorneys in the case and whether Nevada Imaging or the Lockwood family requested that the lawsuit be sealed.
Late this past year, the case was assigned to Judge Valorie Vega.
Although the case has not been resolved, the public cannot find in court records the dates of any upcoming proceedings because it is sealed.
The Review-Journal obtained limited information about cases sealed since 2000. Many litigants are wealthy or wield influence in Las Vegas politics, business or the courts.
Judges said the state Supreme Court's controversial 1995 Whitehead ruling gives them authority to seal cases, but critics said the practice is unconstitutional.
Reed, a resident of Montana, declined to discuss the lawsuit or the death of her 44-year-old sister when contacted by phone.
Executives at Nevada Imaging could not be reached for comment at their offices in Las Vegas.
In a correspondence to the Review-Journal, Reed said that her sister cannot rest in peace with so many unanswered questions about her death. Reed remarked how painful it was to learn her sister would never come home from the hospital. She said that her brother had been murdered years earlier and that her parents were devastated to lose their second child.
Reed said that she posted an online memorial to her sister in hopes of getting answers about her death and that Nevada Imaging forced her to change it by naming her as a defendant in its defamation lawsuit against her parents.
With regard to the case being sealed, her correspondence said, "I can tell you no one in our family would have ever sealed anything as we are trying to prove what happened. We have nothing to hide. To me, if you want to prove something wrong, lay it all out there. To arouse suspicion, seal records. If everything was in their (Nevada Imaging's) favor, why have the records (been) sealed without consent from the family?"
She said that other Clark County residents cannot find out about the case against her family because it is sealed.
But six months after Nevada Imaging filed its lawsuit, Reed's parents, Las Vegas residents Frank and Audrey Lockwood, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in District Court against Nevada Imaging.
Unlike Nevada Imaging's case, the Lockwood lawsuit is not sealed and is available to the public and media. It said that the Lockwoods are serving as their own attorney and that they are suing for more than $65,000 in damages.
But former District Judge Nancy Saitta, who was elected to the state Supreme Court in November, dismissed the lawsuit in June, the Lockwoods said.
The case was dismissed because they failed to file, as required by current medical malpractice law, their lawsuit within a year of lodging a complaint with state officials about the physician on duty at Nevada Imaging, the Lockwoods said.
The couple's lawsuit alleged that their daughter, Tina Lockwood McCarley, went to Nevada Imaging's Peccole Ranch facility for a CAT scan of her lower back on Jan. 12, 2004, and that she died several days later at a local hospice.
The lawsuit said that the Lockwoods think their daughter had an adverse reaction to a dye injected into her as part of the medical procedure. The lawsuit alleged that McCarley stopped breathing and that Nevada Imaging staff did not do enough to resuscitate her before she became unresponsive.
Nevada Imaging personnel told the Lockwoods that their daughter suffered cardiopulmonary arrest, the lawsuit said.
Instead of calling 911 immediately after seeing that McCarley had stopped breathing, the Nevada Imaging employee watching over her called an office supervisor to the recovery room, the lawsuit said. Rather than call 911, the supervisor called in the manager of the facility, who then summoned a physician, according to the lawsuit.
When the physician arrived, he immediately told the staff to phone 911.
The lawsuit said, "Nevada Imaging Center was negligent in the proper training of personnel to handle an emergency situation resulting from an adverse reaction to the injection of a contrast dye and/or cardiopulmonary arrest."
Adding to the frustration and mystery behind McCarley's death is the fact the Clark County coroner ruled that the cause and manner of death were "undetermined," according to coroner records.
