Eight years ago, Daniel Ridge launched a legal battle against his former employer for having rejected him from his work in a county morgue while fighting his own mental health demons.
The 49 -year -old man won an astonishing victory last month when a jury from the Superior Court of the County of Alameda granted him $ 2.4 million in an unjustified trial against his former employer, Alameda Health System.
But Ridge was not in court when the verdict came. While the affair dragged, his mental health had deteriorated, so much so that he was not able to testify and finally fell into roaming, being far from his family, including his 10 -year -old son.
His lawyers do not know where Ridge is and do not know if they can find him among the thousands of homeless people living in the shelters and the streets of Oakland.
“There are so many sick people who live in large pockets,” said Lawrance A. Bohm, lawyer for Ridge. “Finding it will require a huge effort.”
Donald Whitehead, Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, has echoed this feeling, adding that there are limits to what information shelters can provide.
“I have repeatedly seen people looking for dear beings,” he said. “But there are protections for people and their identity, so it’s a challenge when people get lost in the system.”
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What is little known about Ridge is in a press release published by the Bohm Law Group, the cabinet which processed the trial against Alameda Health System, which operates five hospitals and four wellness centers with 800 beds and 1,000 doctors, according to its website.
The property files show that Ridge resided in southern California or in northern California in the 1980s and 1990s, a turbulent period when the use of drugs and gang violence has increased sharply in the state, in particular in large cities like the
From 1960 to 1980, the annual rate of state crime increased from 236 to 888 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. In the early 80s California Public Policy InstituteA non -profit and non -partisan reflection group.
Ridge was one of the many Californians affected by this wave of crime. He lost six of his closest friends because of the violence linked to the gangs, according to the declaration of the law group.
When he had about twenty, his uncle was killed in front of him by a colleague who set him on fire with a Molotov cocktail. Two of his cousins suicide later, the statement said.
“Mr. Ridge’s terrible life has left him the SSPT which has not been diagnosed or not treated for decades because (he) did not have the resources to treat his condition,” wrote the company.
Despite the difficulties, Ridge has become a certified assistant nursing assistant and found a job as a part -time morgue at Highland hospital in Oakland, one of the five hospitals led by Alameda Health System.
Ridge was hired by this hospital in June 2006 and for years received positive comments in its assessments. But things began to change in late 2013 when the attendant at the time of Morgue took a leave, finally retired at the end of 2014, according to his unjustified dismissal trial.
The court documents show that the responsibilities of Morgue full -time from the hospital fell in Ridge, forcing him to work seven days a week while receiving only part -time wages, a condition that continued for about a year.
“This meant that, among others, Mr. Ridge has received no advantage from employees, including health insurance,” said the trial.
Ridge allegedly alleged that he had raised the question of his long hours and part -time wages several times with hospital leaders, especially at the end of summer 2014, just before the birth of his son in October.
Shortly after, according to the trial, the hospital announced an opening for a full -time position of morgue. Ridge was to apply and interview the post, which he obtained in December or January 2015.
But his salary was not the only problem that Ridge had raised with hospital leaders in the hospital during his two years working full time.
He allegedly alleged that he had been forced to use a fixed line and go to the hospital library on a different floor each time he needed to look for medical conditions related to the bodies of the morgue, unlike other employees.
He also raised safety and health problems when the Alameda health system changed how Highland hospital eliminated formaldehyde.
According to the trial, he complained that the new process made him a dizzying feeling and caused a breathlessness, as well as a blurred vision. He asked for respiratory equipment several times but was provided with about 17 months.
Ridge also allegedly alleged that he had raised concerns about sanitation problems and the manipulation of bodies in the hospital. He said that sometimes bodies were left on gurneys in the corridors outside the morgue covered with nothing more than a bed sheet.
“The spill and the leakage of body fluids of the corpses were not only due to a lack of body bags, but also because of the fact that the bodies would sometimes be delivered to the morgue with intravenous tubes always attached to them and with needles and others” Hospital sharp “always on the manager”, according to the prosecution.
Ridge has decided to keep the Morgue region and the corridors clean after having noticed fluids on the ground for days, often having to work with decomposition corpses a few meters from his workstation.
The Bohm Law Group said in its declaration that “growing stress caused by the increase in workload, lack of support and unwelcome corpses began to trigger the unsocial SSPT of Ridge”.
In September 2015, Ridge was diagnosed with a certain form of SSPT and depression and was placed on medical leave until October 4. After returning to work four days later, he underwent a panic crisis.
On October 13, Ridge visited his psychiatrist again who gave him a note so as not to work for six days. Meanwhile, he had a conversation with the holiday management coordinator for Alameda Health System, who told him that he was eligible for taking unpaid leave and protected by employment under the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, and should fill the forms by November 4, according to the trial.
On October 16, the Ridge psychiatrist extended his labor leave until the end of the month, according to the trial.
But when Ridge returned to work on November 1 with his FMLA documents in hand, he was told that his job had been dismissed and was escorted by two law enforcement agents, which encouraged him to later file an unjustified dismissal trial against his former employer. The Mercury News was the first to report on history.
Bohm said his client was fine until the pandemic hits in 2020. He said that the mental health of his client was getting worse, before Ridge fell into homelessness and had moved away from his family.
On March 25, a jury found that Alameda Health System had wrongly dismissed Ridge while he was on medical leave, granting him $ 2 million for past and future emotional distress and $ 455,000 for the loss of income.
In a statement, Alameda Health System said that she was taking the mental and physical health of her employees seriously, but that she also did not agree with the jury’s verdict, which suggests that he was planning to appeal the decision.
“After an in -depth investigation, AHS determined that Mr. Ridge’s allegations were not supported by facts and that HS acted in an appropriate and consistent manner with all the laws and regulations,” the statement said. “However, Ahs does not agree with the jury’s verdict and considers that, when examined by the court of appeal, the parts of the jury’s verdict promoting the applicant are not supported by proof.”
Bohm was surprised by the response of the Alameda health system. He said that the case was so obvious that he won it without his client testify to the court.
“They probably spent almost $ 2 or $ 3 million on their lawyers, trying to fight against a case that we proposed to satisfy $ 500,000 in 2018,” he said. “Pennies for the colony, books for defense.”
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