Family unaware for a year that California woman died at a hospital, her body put in storage, lawsuit says

KCRA, GINGER CONGI, CNN

By Daniel Macht and Andres Valle

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    SACRAMENTO, California (KCRA) — Family members of a 31-year-old Sacramento woman who died after seeking treatment at the hospital said they spent a year searching for their loved one when her body was being kept in cold storage the entire time.

Jessie Marie Peterson’s family alleges in a new lawsuit that Dignity Health never contacted them after Peterson died while in the care of Mercy San Juan Medical Center staff in 2023. Instead, the family says they were wrongly told Peterson had been discharged from the hospital.

Family members of a 31-year-old Sacramento woman who died after seeking treatment at the hospital said they spent a year searching for their loved one when her body was being kept in cold storage the entire time.

Jessie Marie Peterson’s family alleges in a new lawsuit that Dignity Health never contacted them after Peterson died while in the care of Mercy San Juan Medical Center staff in 2023. Instead, the family says they were wrongly told Peterson had been discharged from the hospital.

“I have absolutely no faith in your hospital and the way you care for patients. You’ve lost all of that from me,” said Ginger Congi, the mother of Peterson.

It wasn’t until a year after Peterson’s death that a sheriff’s detective informed her family that the woman’s body was found at the hospital, and Dignity Health never apologized to the family for the ordeal, according to the lawsuit.

“All I could think about was, her lying on the side of a river, decomposing all by herself, and all along she was in a freezer in some storage facility. It was pretty devastating. Once we figured it all out,” Congi said.

The lawsuit says the hospital advertises “treating all people with dignity and respect.” In this case “there was no dignity and respect,” the court documents say.

Peterson’s mother and sisters filed the lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court on Aug. 7. The lawsuit demands more than $5 million in damages and a jury trial, alleging negligence for mishandling a corpse and causing emotional distress, along with a violation of California’s health and safety code.

“We extend our deepest sympathies to the family during this difficult time,” Dignity Health said in a statement to KCRA 3 about the lawsuit. “We are unable to comment on pending litigation.”

A graduate of Roseville High School who attended Sierra College, Peterson had lived with Type 1 diabetes since age 10, according to the lawsuit.

Her mother described Peterson as bubbly and energetic.

“She loved people. She loved to share. She loved her sisters,” Congi said.

Congi said Peterson was regularly treated at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Sacramento.

After being admitted to the hospital on April 6, 2023, because of a diabetic episode, she died two days later, court documents say.

According to a timeline in the lawsuit, Peterson had called her mother at 2:50 p.m. on April 8, 2023, asking to be picked up because she was going to leave the hospital.

“She wanted me to come and pick her up,” Congi said. “She wanted to leave the hospital. I told her she was in the best place to get the best care that she needed. She needed to stay put.”

Peterson was pronounced dead at 4:27 p.m. that day, according to the lawsuit.

Congi said she called the hospital on April 11, 2023, to speak to her daughter and was told she was discharged against medical advice, according to the lawsuit.

“They said they didn’t have anybody there by that name. And I asked them to double check, because I’d just seen her a week before, and spoke to her on the telephone, spelled her name for them, and the man on the phone said, ‘Well, we don’t have anybody here by that name,'” Congi said.

The lawsuit alleges that the hospital transferred the body to a cold storage facility on April 9, 2023, and didn’t issue a death certificate until April 4, 2024, 361 days after she died. The lawsuit says the death certificate should have been issued within 15 hours of her death.

“He was bound and required by California law to issue a death certificate within 15 hours and to contact the family of the next of kin. He did neither. So the death certificate that we have he did not complete. Instead of 15 hours, he completed it 360 of some days after the death,” said Marc Greenberg, the family’s attorney.

The family’s efforts to locate Peterson included filing a missing person’s report with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office and posting her information on a Department of Justice website for missing persons. The family also checked in with the county coroner to ask about Peterson.

A detective eventually called a family member on April 12, 2024, to say that her body had been found and they later learned the body had been in one of Mercy San Juan’s off-site storage facilities.

“At this point, Jessie’s body was so decomposed that an open casket funeral was not feasible, and Jessie’s fingerprints were not even obtainable for any keepsake,” the lawsuit says.

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