Alameda Health System was ordered to pay $2.4 million to former Highland Hospital morgue employee Daniel Ridge in a wrongful termination suit after he was fired during a medical leave to address worsening mental and physical health — but he may never see the money.
Though his lawyers won the lawsuit last month, after the case had dragged on for eight years, Ridge has yet to be found after his estrangement from his family and severe mental illness that’s pushed him into homelessness, Ridge’s attorney Lawrance Bohm said. Ridge’s mental health grew so bad during the case that he was unable to testify during the trial, a fact that Bohm said was “unprecedented” in his 20-plus years of employment law.
“He’s gone. I couldn’t even find him,” Bohm said about Ridge’s battles with PTSD. “My client doesn’t even know and will probably never appreciate what we did for him, but his family will never forget it.”
Bohm secured $455,000 in past economic damages, $1 million in past damages and another $1 million in future damages for violations of the California Family Rights Act and retaliation for taking medical leave, according to the ruling. Bohm estimates Alameda Health System will also need to pay his law firm upwards of $5 million in attorneys’ fees related to the case.
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Ridge began working as a part-time morgue attendant at Highland Hospital in 2006. He received passing evaluations from his bosses throughout the next eight years, according to court documents. In 2014, the full-time morgue attendant left on medical leave for much of the year, which caused Ridge to take up full-time work up to seven days per week.
The full-time morgue attendant officially retired in October 2014, and Ridge was offered the full-time position in February 2015. Highland Hospital searched for a part-time morgue attendant, but months of understaffing began to overburden Ridge and inundate him with stress, exacerbating his high blood pressure, according to court documents.
In February 2015, Highland Hospital changed its use of formaldehyde in the morgue, and Ridge stated the new process made him feel dizzy and caused “macabre” thoughts, leading him to file a workers’ compensation claim. Ridge’s mental health began declining, with more “intrusive thoughts of death and dying,” according to a case summary. Bohm argued that Ridge’s health issues were actually the “predictable consequence” of high work stress and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder from losing childhood friends to gang-related violence.
With his mental and physical health conditions worsening, Ridge sought treatment from Kaiser, where he was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, major depression and PTSD. He called out of work during numerous periods in September 2015 for mental health evaluations, including a 3-week stint in Kaiser’s Intensive Outpatient Program from Sept. 14 to Oct. 4. During this time, Ridge’s managers described him as “unreliable” in internal emails and acknowledged the “short staffing” at the morgue during Ridge’s medical leave had created a frustrating situation for Highland Hospital staff, according to case documents.
When Ridge returned to work, his bosses questioned his dependability and raised the idea of moving to a new position. That week, Ridge experienced a panic attack in the hospital that sent him to the emergency department for chest pain. Ridge received a doctor’s note granting him a medical leave of absence that was later extended through the end of October.
Daniel Ridge was a former morgue attendant at Highland Hospital for Alameda Health System. Ridge was awarded $2.4 million by an Alameda County jury for a wrongful termination lawsuit against Alameda Health System. (Bohm Law Group)When Ridge returned to work on Nov. 1 with a doctor’s note excusing his absence, he found his office had been cleaned out and his belongings were gone. Ridge began working with corpses in the morgue anyway until a nurse supervisor and two sheriff’s deputies confronted him, saying, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Where am I supposed to be?” Ridge replied.
“Not here,” he was told, according to court documents.
Ridge was escorted out of the hospital while he pleaded that he had a doctor’s note excusing his absence. His termination caused a bad mental health situation to spiral, eventually leading to homelessness, Bohm said. “Unhoused, unemployed, isolated and angry,” Ridge became estranged from his 10-year-old son and family as they continued to follow the trial themselves, his attorney said. The court appointed an advocate to act on Ridge’s behalf.
Ridge’s PTSD worsened so much that he was found to be incompetent to testify by psychiatric experts, forcing his legal team to rely on five days of depositions between January and March 2018.
Over the next eight years, Bohm continued to pursue the case on Ridge’s behalf, and told Bay Area News Group he never doubted that Ridge would prevail.
“I’ve never seen any way that they could get out of this case, and that’s why I stuck in it for so long,” Bohm said.
The Alameda Health System stated it believes the jury’s ruling was “mixed,” despite the ruling in Ridge’s favor and the multi-million-dollar award.
“We are pleased that the jury found AHS did not discriminate against the plaintiff, nor did it fail to accommodate him. However, AHS otherwise disagrees with the jury’s verdict and believes that, when reviewed by the Court of Appeal, the portions of the jury’s verdict favoring the plaintiff are not supported by the evidence,” Alameda Health System said in a statement.
Bohm said his legal team has set up a special needs trust to delegate how the $2.4 million in damages will be used to help Ridge’s young son. He said he’s hopeful the boy will start receiving child support payments, and that Ridge himself will eventually be found and given proper medical treatment for his mental illness.
“He’s caught in a whirlpool, and he’s not coming out,” Bohm said about Ridge. “The best we can do is help him to be comfortable and to help provide some of his basic needs.”
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