County OKs $1 Million to Settle Child’s Hospital Negligence Case

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved paying nearly $1 million Tuesday to settle the legal case of an infant who survived choking on a pinto bean only to receive negligent care--and irreparable brain damage--at a county hospital.

Juan Arrelano was 7 months old in January 1995 when he was taken to County-USC Medical Center after the bean became lodged in his windpipe. The bean was removed during surgery, but then a host of complications caused irreparable brain damage that has limited the child’s life expectancy to less than eight years, according to court documents.

Juan is deaf and blind, suffers from cerebral palsy and must be fed through a tube as a result of surgical complications that county lawyers concluded were at least partially preventable.

County lawyers placed much of the blame on medical staffers who didn’t notice that his breathing tube had become dislodged, leading to brain damage from lack of oxygen, and on an attending anesthesiologist who left Juan’s care too early, records show.