Eight years ago, Daniel Ridge began a legal battle with his former employer after fighting his own mental health demons and rejecting him from his job at the county morgue.
The 49-year-old won a surprising victory last month when a ju judge in Alameda County Superior Court awarded $2.4 million in an illegal dismissal lawsuit against his former employer, the Alameda Health System.
However, when the verdict came in, Ridge was not in court. His mental health had deteriorated when the incident was dragged on, so he was unfit to testify, eventually falling homeless and estranged from his family, including his 10-year-old son.
His lawyers don’t know where Ridge is and whether he will be able to find him among the thousands of homeless people living in shelters and streets in Auckland.
“There are a lot of people who are unwell and indomitable living in big pockets,” said Ridge’s lawyer Laurence A. Baum. “It takes a lot of effort to find him.”
Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Union of Homelessness, reiterated the sentiment, adding that there are limits to the information the shelter can provide.
“I’ve seen a lot of people search for someone they love,” he said. “But people and their identities are protected, which is a challenge when people get lost in the system.”
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Little is known about Ridge in a news statement released by Bohm Law Group, who was responsible for the Alameda Health System, which operates five hospitals and four wellness centres with 800 beds and 1,000 doctors, according to its website.
Real estate records show that ridges lived in Southern California or Northern California from the 1980s to 1990s. This was a disturbing period when drug and gang violence use rose sharply in states, particularly in big cities such as LA.
Between 1960 and 1980, the state’s annual crime rate jumped to 236 to 888 violent crime per 100,000 residents. By the early 1980s, crime rates had fallen, but in 1992 it had returned to its peak of 1,115 per 100,000 people.
Ridge was one of many Californians affected by this wave of crime. He lost six of his closest friends to gang-related violence, according to a statement from a legal group.
When he was in his twenties, his uncle was killed in front of him by a colleague who burned him with a Molotov cocktail. His two cousins committed suicide afterwards, the statement read.
“Mr. Ridge’s terrible life left him with PTSD. [he] There was a lack of resources to treat his condition,” the company wrote.
Despite the challenges, Ridge became a certified nursing assistant and found a job as an attendant at a part-time morgue at Highland Hospital in Auckland, one of five hospitals run by the Alameda Health System.
Ridge was hired to the hospital in June 2006 and received positive feedback in his ratings over the years. However, things began to change by late 2013, when the then-term ridiculous attendant took a leave of absence and eventually retired in late 2014, according to his illegal dismissal lawsuit.
Court documents show that full-time morgue liability at the hospital fell to the ridge, forcing him to work seven days a week while receiving only part-time pay, a condition that lasted about a year.
“This meant, among other things, that Ridge did not receive employee benefits, including health insurance,” the lawsuit reads.
Ridge claimed he raised many issues with hospital leaders and part-time pay with him, including the end of summer 2014, just before his son’s birth in October.
Shortly afterwards, the lawsuit alleges that the hospital announced an opening for full-time morgue staff. Ridge had to apply and interview for positions he acquired in December or January 2015.
However, during his two years of full-time hours, the only issue Ridge raised alongside the hospital leaders was not his pay.
He claimed, unlike other employees, he was forced to use a landline to go to a hospital library on another floor whenever he needed to study a medical condition related to the morgue.
He also raised safety and health concerns when the Alameda Health System changed how Highland Hospital disposed of Formaldehyde.
He complained that the new process caused dizziness, shortness of breath and blurred vision, according to the lawsuit. He repeatedly asked for respiratory tract, but was not supplied for about 17 months.
Ridge also claimed he raised concerns about hygiene issues and the handling of bodies at the hospital. He said that sometimes the remains were covered in Gurneys in the corridors outside the morgue.
“The flow and leakage of fluid from the corpses is not only due to the lack of body bags, but also due to the fact that the body is still attached to them and delivers to morgues with needles and sharp tubes of other hospitals that still lie in Gurneys.”
After noticing liquids on the floor for several days, Ridge took it to himself to keep the morgue area and corridor clean, often having to work with a rotten corpse immediately from his workstation.
“The increased workload, lack of support and increased stress caused by inappropriate corpses have begun to cause Ridge’s undiagnosed PTSD,” Bohm Law Group said in a statement.
In September 2015, Ridge was diagnosed with some form of PTSD and depression and was on medical leave until October 4th. After returning to work four days later, he suffered a panic attack.
On October 13th, Ridge visited his psychiatrist again. During that time he had a conversation with the vacation management coordinator at Alameda Health System. He said he is eligible for unpaid employment protection leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act or the FMLA and must complete the form by November 4th.
On October 16, Ridge’s psychiatrist extended his leave from work until the end of the month, according to the lawsuit.
However, when Ridge returned to work with FMLA documents on November 1, he was said to have ended his employment and been escorted by two law enforcement officers, later urged him to file a fraudulent dismissal lawsuit against his former employer. Mercury News first reported on the story.
Baume said clients will be fine until the pandemic hit in 2020. He said the client’s mental health deteriorated before Ridge fell homeless and estranged from his family.
On March 25, ju apprentices discovered that Alameda Health System accidentally fired a ridge while on medical leave, awarding $2 million for past and future emotional distress and $455,000 for past income losses.
In a statement, Alameda Health System said it takes the employees’ mental and physical health seriously, but it also opposes the ju-seek verdict and plans to appeal the ruling.
“After a thorough investigation, AHS determined that Mr Ridge’s allegations were not supported by facts and that AHS acted appropriately and consistently in all laws and regulations,” the statement read. “However, the AHS opposes the ju judge’s verdict and believes that when reviewed by the Court of Appeal, some of the ju judge’s decisions in favour of the plaintiff are not supported by evidence.”
Bohm was surprised at the Alameda Health System’s response. He said the case was very clear and he won it without his client testifying in court.
“They are probably trying to fight a lawsuit that they spent nearly $2-3 million or $3 million on their lawyers and offered to settle it for $500,000 in 2018,” he said. “Penny for settlement, pound for defense.”
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