Health Law

This is just not right. Mistakes like this should not be made

You just can't let this happen.  The hospital should have systems in place to protect against this.  The emotional trauma is extreme and heartwrenching.

Here's the story.

BY BRYON OKADA

FORT WORTH -- A Johnson County couple filed a lawsuit Tuesday afternoon alleging negligence and gross negligence against Huguley Memorial Medical Center of Fort Worth following a July incident where hospital staff sent their newborn’s corpse to the cleaners with the dirty laundry.

According to the lawsuit, it took the hospital staff 19 hours to locate the missing body. By then the unpreserved body had been crushed and disfigured.

Background

On July 8, Kourtney McGee of Cleburne was in her second trimester when she went to Huguley because she was bleeding. She gave birth prematurely to Jacob Dwayne Robinson, who did not survive.

Staff told McGee and Milburn "Pete" Robinson of Alvarado, the baby's father, that the body would be taken to the morgue. However, when the funeral director arrived at the hospital, he was told the body could not be found. The baby's body was not refrigerated when it got to the morgue. Instead it was sent to a commercial cleaner with the laundry.

The lawsuit contends that Huguley Memorial Medical Center had a duty to care for, handle, maintain and/or prepare for burial the body of Jacob Robinson. It breached its duty by "mishandling, misplacing, and disfiguring the body..."

Damages

According to the lawsuit, the family has sustained "severe emotional distress and mental anguish" and are seeking punitive and exemplary damages.

How did the baby end up in the laundry?

Unclear.

"That’s one of the things we want to know," said Fort Worth attorney John David Hart, who is representing the couple. "How could this happen, that these parents lost their child, lost their son, then the hospital doesn't have a procedure or policy in place for dealing with it."

What is Huguley’s response?

"Our sympathies go to a family obviously who had a stillborn situation -- everyone feels bad about that," said Dallas attorney Michael Stewart, who is representing Huguley. "As for the allegations, we deny those and we deny that the hospital has done anything inappropriate."

With pending litigation, Stewart declined to release more information on the case.

What is the difference between negligence and gross negligence?

Negligence is the failure to extend ordinary care. Gross negligence is negligence that shows either reckless conduct or conscious disregard for the rights of the family.

Source:  Star-Telegram.com

Full post as published by Cerebral Palsy Law Blog on February 08, 2008 (boomark / email).