A California hospital told her family she left. Her body was found in cold storage months later, lawsuit says
For nearly a year after she seemingly vanished from a Sacramento-area hospital, Jessie Peterson’s family mounted a frantic search — distributing posters of her and calling any hospital and police department they could think of, but to no avail. But the 31-year-old wasn’t missing. She had never left the hospital alive. In a lawsuit filed this month, the Peterson family alleges that staff at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael never notified them that Jessie had died. Instead, their attorney told The Times, they were led to believe she had checked out of the hospital — against medical advice — in April 2023. “You don’t just get to make these kinds of mistakes and think it’s OK,” attorney Marc R. Greenberg said. A spokesperson for Mercy San Juan, which is operated by Dignity Health and owned by CommonSpirit Health, declined to comment on the lawsuit. “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family during this difficult time,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “We are unable to comment on pending litigation.” The lawsuit seeks $25 million in damages, including punitive damages for “outrageous and