Last week, a former inmate at a California jail was recently awarded a $480,000 settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit because staff didn’t get her to the hospital fast enough when she was in labor.
Documents from a meeting show that the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved Sandra Quinones’s proposed settlement.
At the time, she was six months pregnant and held at the Orange County Jail.
The meeting recounted the complaint filed in April 2020. The complaint alleged the wrongful death and infliction of emotional distress in the death of her child.
Quinones was released from jail in April 2016, and she sued for delayed transportation during labor.
According to the lawsuit against Orange County, California, Quinones had to wait two hours for help after her water broke, and she pushed a distress button in her jail cell to call for help.
Her water broke unexpectedly, and she said in a lawsuit that she called for help in her cell for hours before anyone came.
She pressed a button in her cell to ask for medical help, but no one came to help her for two hours.
To add insult to injury, the jail staff stopped at Starbucks on the way to the hospital, the 2020 complaint says.
Quinones had to wait in the back of the police van while bleeding and in labor.
The complaint says that instead of calling an ambulance, jail staff “decided to take Quinones to the hospital on a non-emergency basis.”
The document says Quinones gave birth at the hospital, but the baby died soon after. This left her with “severe and extreme post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.”
The lawsuit says that the jail staff’s actions or lack of actions hurt Quinones and caused her baby to die.
It also said that the county didn’t train its employees well enough.
Lawyers for Orange County tried to get the case thrown out, saying that the plaintiff didn’t have enough facts to back up her claim and that the lawsuit was filed more than two years after the statute of limitations.
Alexander Shunnarah Trial Attorneys
When negligence causes a fatality, the family members can seek compensation for wrongful death damages. The experienced attorneys at Alexander Shunnarah Trial Attorneys understand that losing a loved one is a devasting experience. We are here to fight for you so you can grieve. Call our Wrongful Death Lawyers for a free consultation at 1-800-229-7989.
References:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/california-inmate-says-her-baby-161329357.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/26/us/inmate-childbirth-settlement-orange-county/index.html
