California Hospital Mistakenly Informs Family Woman Was Discharged When She Had Actually Passed Away, Lawsuit Alleges
A 31-year-old woman’s family said in a civil case that hospital staff in Northern California lied when they said she had checked out. The patient had died, and her body was kept in cold storage for a year.
There are claims in a lawsuit that Peterson’s family brought this month in Sacramento County Superior Court that she had Type 1 diabetes when she was admitted to Mercy San Juan Medical Center on April 6, 2018.
The lawsuit says that Ginger Congi, Peterson’s mother, called Mercy San Juan to check on her daughter a few days after she was admitted and was told that she had been sent home.
The family put up posters around town, reported Peterson missing to the county sheriff’s office, and even talked to homeless people in the area in the hopes that someone had seen him.
“Jessie’s family looked for her all day. According to the lawsuit brought by the plaintiffs’ lawyer Marc Greenberg, the Sacramento County Detective’s Office did not tell Jessie’s family that she had been found dead at Mercy San Juan Hospital until April 12, 2024.
“At this point, Jessie’s body was so decomposed that an open casket funeral was not feasible, and Jessie’s fingerprints were not even obtainable for any keepsake,” it states.
It was also impossible for an autopsy to find out “whether medical malpractice played any role” in Peterson’s death, the claim says.
Peterson’s family found out that he had died on April 8, 2018, but Dr. Nadeem Mukhtar didn’t sign a death document until April 4, 2019.
Hospital records that Peterson’s family got show that his body had been kept on shelf No. Red 22A in a cold storage room away from the hospital for almost all of that time.
The family is suing for $25 million, saying that someone was careless.
A spokesperson for Dignity Health, the company that owns the hospital, could not be reached for comment Thursday right away.
It says on its ads that “at our care facilities, we take pride in treating all people with dignity and respect” at Mercy San Juan Hospital. “There was no honor or respect in this case,” Greenberg said.
“Mercy San Juan Hospital failed in its most fundamental duty to notify Jessie’s family of her death,” he noted. “Mercy San Juan stored Jessie in an off-site warehouse and she was left to decompose for nearly a year while her family relentlessly inquired about her whereabouts.”