The Bronx victim of a sick joke – a midnight text message claiming that her 89-year-old mother had been brought back to life – sued Columbia Presbyterian Hospital yesterday for $10 million and the immediate return of her mom’s donated body.
In the early-morning hours before her mom’s Aug. 2 funeral, Joan Cahill got an instant message from someone screen-named “columpresbyteria.”
“We have some miraculous news,” the text read. “Through some groundbreaking medical experiments, we have succeeded in resuscitating your mother from her lifeless state.”
But when she pressed for more information from “Dr. Schneider, head surgeon at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital,” the person wrote back: “No, actually, you stupid c— bitch, she is f—ing dead, hahahahahahahahahaha.”
Cahill was still visibly shaken yesterday.
“The whole thing is a horror,” she said. “I cannot fathom how one human being could possibly do this to another.”
The suit charges the hospital and the Columbia University Anatomical Gift Program with violating her and her mother’s right to privacy, and it seeks damages for emotional distress.
“This horribly cruel joke [has] left me unable to sleep, bewildered, melancholy, depressed, distraught, shaking and feeling downright sick,” Cahill said.
A judge has ordered that the body of Cahill’s mother, Grace, be left alone, pending a hearing next Thursday, said Cahill’s lawyer, Lindsay Rosenberg.
“I won’t let them touch her,” Cahill said.
Columbia University spokesman Bryan Dotson said there was no surgeon named Schneider at the medical center.
And Craig LeMoult, a spokesman for the medical center, said, “At this point, we have limited knowledge of the situation and are looking into it.
“We can appreciate the distress this type of message may have caused Ms. Cahill,” he added. “Patient privacy is a top priority at Columbia University Medical Center, and we go to great lengths to secure the absolute confidentiality of patient and donor records.”
Grace Cahill, described as a former model, Post reader and all-around cheerful person who spent most of her life in The Bronx, suffered from emphysema and pneumonia.
She died at Montefiore Hospital on July 31 but not before agreeing to donate her body to Columbia in hopes that it could be used for important medical research, her daughter said.