Free Republic

<p>Relatives of the city's first swine flu fatality say they are ready to sue the city for $40 million.</p> <p>Mitchell Wiener's widow Bonnie and his three sons, Adam, Jordan and Farrell, filed a notice of claim alleging the city was negligent in dealing with the outbreak that swept through the city three months ago.</p>

NEW YORK — A hospital official says a school assistant principal has become the first death in New York City linked to the swine flu virus. Flushing Hospital Medical Center spokesman Andrew Rubin says Mitchell Wiener died Sunday evening. Wiener had worked at an intermediate school in Queens. He had been sick for nearly a week before his school was closed on Thursday. He had been hospitalized and on a ventilator. The city's first outbreak of swine flu occurred three weeks ago. That was when about 700 students and 300 other people associated with a Catholic high school in Queens...

The assistant principal of a Queens school who had been hospitalized with swine flu died on Sunday evening. It was the first death in New York State from the outbreak and came as city officials announced that five more Queens schools had been closed. The assistant principal, Mitchell Wiener, had been “overwhelmed” by the illness despite treatment with an experimental drug, according to Ole Pedersen, a spokesman for Flushing Hospital Medical Center, where Mr. Wiener had been a patient since last Wednesday. Mr. Pedersen said that Mr. Wiener, the assistant principal of Intermediate School 238 in Hollis, one of the...