Melissa Rivers Settles Lawsuit with Clinic Where Joan Rivers Stopped Breathing Before Her Death

"Those culpable for her death have accepted responsibility for their actions quickly and without equivocation," Melissa said in a statement Thursday

Photo: Christopher Polk/Getty

Melissa Rivers has settled a lawsuit with the clinic where her mother Joan Rivers stopped breathing during surgery before her death in 2014.

“The lawsuit concerning my mother’s death has been settled. In accepting this settlement, I am able to put the legal aspects of my mother’s death behind me and ensure that those culpable for her death have accepted responsibility for their actions quickly and without equivocation,” Melissa said in a statement Thursday.

Joan stopped breathing during throat surgery in August 2014 at the Yorkville Endoscopy Center. She died a week later at 81 on Sept. 4 in a New York hospital.

“Moving forward, my focus will be to ensure that no one ever has to go through what my mother, [my son] Cooper and I went through and I will work towards ensuring higher safety standards in out-patient surgical clinics,” Melissa’s statement continued. “I want to express my personal gratitude to my legal team for their wise counsel and prompt resolution of this.”

Melissa, 48, filed her lawsuit in January 2015. She has been vocal about the pain of losing her mother, most recently on Mother’s Day, calling the holiday an “emotional train wreck” in a blog post.

“This will be the second Mother’s Day since she died, and while the loss has been profound, I’ve filled the giant space in my life she occupied with other things, like grief, anger, fear, and Xanax. And work,” Rivers wrote. “I’ve been busy, busy, busy, throwing myself into lots of projects: Fashion Police, writing books, and developing TV shows. The only thing I haven’t been working on is myself.”