California hospital told woman's family she had checked out when she was actually dead, lawsuit says

The family of a 31-year-old woman who died was told that she had left the hospital and her body had been kept on ice for a year in Northern California, according to a civil complaint a patient’s relatives filed. 
 
Lying in steno bed in Mercy San Juan Medical Center on April 6 last year, Jessie Marie Peterson was suffering from Type 1 diabetes, as alleged in the Sacramento County Superior Court lawsuit containing the assertions of the patient’s family. 
 
In this case, the latter was revealed in the complaint where Peterson’s mother Ginger Congi, visited the hospital to see her daughter and was informed she had been discharged, days after she was admitted on Mercy San Juan’s instance. 
 
It was a desperate attempt to find Peterson: the family reported his disappearance to the county sheriff’s department, put up posters around the city and tried to speak to the homeless people in an attempt to find out if anyone had seen him. 
 
“The family searched and searched for Jessie. It was not until April 12, 2024, that the Sacramento County Detective’s Office informed Jessie’s family that she had been found dead at Mercy San Juan hospital”, plaintiffs’ attorney Marc Greenberg said. 

‘At this stage, Jessie’s body was too far gone for the family to consider an open casket funeral and photographs of Jessie’s hands showed that even fingerprints were not available for any kind of memento. ’ 
 
He also stated that the decomposition also permitted an autopsy to rule out as to “whether medical malpractice played any role as to Peterson’s demise. ” 
 
It was only recently the family learnt that Peterson had died on April 8 last year although a death certificate was signed only on April 4 of this year by Dr. Nadeem Mukhtar. 
 
For nearly all those days, Peterson’s corpse was stored at shelf No. Red 22A in a covert cold storage that is off the hospital’s compound, note}, which the family requested from the hospital as part of discovery of the records. 
 
The family, therefore, seeks 25 million dollars compensation for the negligence of the hospital. 
 
It was not immediately possible to reach an official of the hospital, part of the Dignity Health chain, on Thursday for his or her comment on the matter. 
 
In a statement, Greenberg said the management of Mercy San Juan hospital boasts that ‘at our care facilities, we take pride in how we treat all people,’ but what happened to them was quite the opposite. 
 
Mercy San Juan hospital did the worst of the worst by not only failing to inform Jessie’s family about her demise, but also keeping her in an offsite warehouse for almost a year before her remains could be collected.