A 31-year-old woman suffering from Type 1 diabetes, Jessie Marie Peterson, died at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Northern California in April of last year. However, hospital officials allegedly told her family that she had checked out. Her body was kept in cold storage for a year, and her family was not informed of her death until almost a year later, when they were notified by the Sacramento County Detective’s Office. Due to the decomposition of her body, an autopsy could not determine the cause of death or if medical malpractice was involved. The family, who had been searching for her, eventually found out that she had died and that her body had been stored in an off-site cold storage unit. The family filed a civil lawsuit against the hospital for negligence, asking for $25 million in damages. The family’s attorney, Marc Greenberg, accused Mercy San Juan of failing to notify the family of Jessie’s death and storing her body in a warehouse while they relentlessly inquired about her whereabouts. The hospital’s parent company, Dignity Health, has not yet commented on the lawsuit. The family is seeking justice for what they believe was a grave mishandling of their loved one’s death by the hospital.
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Lawsuit alleges California hospital falsely informed woman’s family she had left when she had actually passed away
