Parents File Suit Against County Over Baby’s Death : Health care: They allege that medical records were withheld showing the infant was sick when he left Olive View Medical Center. Punitive damages of $2 million are sought.

The parents of a Northridge infant who died from an undiagnosed birth defect have filed a lawsuit against the County of Los Angeles and a nursing service for allegedly withholding medical records that showed the baby was sick when it left the hospital.

A civil suit seeking $2 million in punitive damages was filed Friday in Los Angeles Central District Court alleging that the county and Medical Specialists Temporary Personnel conspired to withhold evidence, said Aileen Norvell Goldstein, an attorney for the baby’s mother.

A similar suit was filed the same day by an attorney for the baby’s father, she said.

Patricia Chavez, 18, and her boyfriend, Reynaldo Ruiz, 22, also have a medical malpractice suit pending against the Olive View Medical Center where Steven Ruiz, the couple’s son, was born without an anal opening in February, 1990.

Administrators from the medical center, located in Sylmar, and representatives from Medical Specialists Temporary Personnel could not be reached for comment.

During contentious pretrial sparring for the original malpractice suit, attorneys for the county and one of three nursing registries sued by the couple claimed that a healthy baby was born at Olive View and switched later with one that was fatally ill and had been born elsewhere.

Lacking evidence to prove the claim, the county ordered sophisticated genetic tests of tissue collected from the 5-day-old baby and Chavez and Ruiz, which determined last June that they were the dead baby’s likely parents.

The new lawsuit is based partly on other medical records, including two blood tests, that show that Olive View personnel knew the infant was sick when he left the hospital, Goldstein said.

The child’s condition could have been easily corrected if diagnosed earlier, the parents allege.

The tests show Ruiz’s white blood count was 29.8, or triple that of a healthy baby’s, when he left the hospital, indicating he was furiously trying to fight infection, Goldstein said.

The tests were discovered when an expert, hired by Goldstein to examine Ruiz’s medical records, received 80 pages of records from the county last June that she had never been given, she said.

“They didn’t produce those records until after they had made the accusation that the baby had been switched--all the while knowing that medical records showed the baby was deathly ill when it left the hospital,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein said she filed the suit Friday because the statute of limitations on the case was nearing.

“This is not about money . . . this is about vindication and an apology from the county,” Goldstein said. “They have never apologized to my client.”

Goldstein said she will return to court Aug. 18 to seek a new trial date for the medical malpractice suit, which was set for June 8, 1995, in San Fernando Superior Court.

She said she is seeking the maximum award of $250,000 in damages for medical malpractice that she alleges led to the baby’s death.

Los Angeles County attorneys refused an offer made by Goldstein last November to pay the estimated $20,000 it would cost to hire a private judge so the trial could have been held this year.