Hoag Hospital Denies Charge of Negligence in Boy’s Death : Lawsuit: Mother accuses doctors of improperly treating child’s fractured skull.

A local hospital denied Monday that its doctors failed to adequately protect a 22-month-old boy who was taken there with a skull fracture last March and was subsequently beaten to death by a Newport Beach man.

The boy’s mother, Karey Lynn Jaeger, accuses Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and four of its doctors in a recent lawsuit of failing to give proper treatment to her son’s skull fracture when he was taken to the hospital March 18, 1994.

The suit in Orange County Superior Court also accuses the hospital and doctors of negligence for failing to report the injury to authorities and releasing the boy to Brian Laudenback, who was then Jaeger’s boyfriend.

Laudenback, 33, was convicted earlier this month of second-degree murder for beating the boy to death while baby-sitting him on March 25, 1994.

But Hoag spokeswoman Maureen Mazzatenta said the hospital was not negligent when it did not report the incident to authorities because its personnel had no reason to suspect that the boy, Tyler Jaeger, had been abused.

Mazzatenta said the injury was consistent with Laudenback’s explanation that the boy had fallen from a table and hit his head. She also said that Jaeger expressed no suspicions that Laudenback might have abused the boy, and that the boy himself did not seem afraid.

The interaction between the three, she said, “seemed normal and loving.”

The spokeswoman also denied that the hospital released the boy to Laudenback’s custody. Rather, the boy was released to the custody of Jaeger, who signed the discharge papers for her son, Mazzatenta said.