The family of a 31-year-old woman who was believed to have gone missing from a hospital has filed a lawsuit after discovering she had been dead for nearly a year.
Jessie Peterson checked into Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Sacramento, California, on April 6, 2023, due to complications related to her Type 1 diabetes.
Jessie contacted her mother, Ginger Congi, requesting to be picked up after two days. However, when Ginger called the hospital on April 11, she was informed that Jessie had checked herself out against medical advice.
When Jessie did not return home or contact her family, her loved ones grew concerned and initiated a search involving both the police and the California Department of Justice.
Almost exactly a year later, on April 12, 2024, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office informed Jessie’s family that she was deceased.
The news was even more shocking when the family learned that Jessie had been pronounced dead about two hours after calling her mother to pick her up one year earlier.
The day after her death, Jessie’s body was taken to a cold-storage facility, where it remained until her family’s discovery.
In California, physicians are required to complete a death certificate within 15 hours of a death. However, Jessie’s certificate was filed 361 days later, according to the family’s lawsuit.
“Mercy San Juan stored Jessie in an off-site warehouse morgue and she was left to decompose for nearly a year while her family relentlessly inquired about her whereabouts,” the lawsuit stated.
The filing, which noted that Jessie died of cardiopulmonary arrest, alerted sheriff’s officials to her death, at which point her family was informed.
The family is seeking $25 million in damages, including punitive damages, for what they have called ‘outrageous and inexcusable negligence.’
Their attorney, Marc R. Greenberg, told The Los Angeles Times: “You don’t just get to make these kinds of mistakes and think it’s OK.”
A spokesperson for Mercy San Juan, operated by Dignity Health and owned by CommonSpirit Health, declined to comment on the lawsuit but told The Times: “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family during this difficult time. We are unable to comment on pending litigation.”
Greenberg claims the family has also found inconsistencies in the medical documents concerning Jessie’s health, with one record indicating a chest X-ray taken when she checked in was compared to another scan done on May 31, 2023.
“She was dead and in cold storage by then, so what did [they] compare it to?” Greenberg questioned.
Jessie’s body had decomposed too much during the year in storage for an autopsy to provide many answers to the family’s questions.
Dignity Health, which operates Mercy San Juan, told The Guardian: “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family during this difficult time. We are unable to comment on pending litigation.”