Trial to open in lawsuit connected to hospital deaths after Katrina

A jury trial set to open on today will weigh whether one of America's largest health care corporations should be held accountable for deaths and injuries at a New Orleans hospital marooned by floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina. The class-action suit is expected to highlight desperate e-mail exchanges, not previously made public, between the hospital and its corporate parent. "Are you telling us we are on our own and you cannot help?" Sandra Cordray, a communications manager at Memorial Medical Center, which sheltered some 1,800 people, wrote to officials at the Tenet Healthcare Corporation's Dallas headquarters after begging them for supplies and an airlift. The suit, brought on behalf of people who were at the hospital during the disaster, alleges that insufficiencies in Memorial's backup electrical system and failed plans for patient care and evacuation, among other factors, caused personal injury and death.