County May Pay Youth $3.7 Million for Injuries

Lawyers for Los Angeles County have recommended paying $3.7 million to settle a medical malpractice lawsuit on behalf of a boy who suffered severe brain damage after his breathing was cut off by a restraining vest the staff of a county hospital used to keep him from falling out of bed.

The settlement, observers believe, would be the largest in the county’s history. It must be approved by the county Claims Board, which meets Thursday, and then by the county Board of Supervisors.

Jonathan Park, then 11, was recovering from injuries suffered in a car accident when he was taken to the county’s Rancho los Amigos Medical Center in Downey in late 1993.

After he fell from his bed, doctors had him placed in a wraparound cloth “Posey” vest to keep him secure and ordered a nurse to watch him at all times in a “constant care room,” according to county legal documents.

But less than a month later, Park was found lying face-down, entangled in the vest, without a pulse and blue in the face from lack of oxygen.

Because of the staff’s inattentiveness--and problems encountered during his resuscitation--the boy suffered severe brain damage and is in a permanent vegetative state, according to lawyers on both sides of the case.

Rather than risk a jury award that could reach an estimated $7 million, lawyers representing the county have recommended the settlement, which includes $2.8 million in cash to pay for the boy’s future medical expenses and to make up for loss of earnings. The remaining $900,000 would go to Park’s lawyers.

S. Robert Ambrose, the assistant county counsel for general litigation, said he recalls only one other legal settlement that comes close to the proposed payout--for a man who was hit by a falling chunk of concrete as he jogged under a county-owned pier.

County officials and lawyers for both sides could not be reached for comment or declined to discuss the case in detail, citing the pending settlement.

“I can’t comment except to say that we are recommending it for approval,” Ambrose said. “But it is tragic. All these cases are tragic.”

Documents filed in connection with the civil case show that the county initially denied any responsibility for Park’s injuries, and that the private lawyers representing the county even countersued Park’s father, claiming he had been drinking before the auto accident and was therefore at least partially responsible.

Although Park was comatose after the car in which he was riding crashed into a concrete column, he came out of the coma even before he was transferred to Rancho los Amigos on Nov. 29, 1993.

His condition rapidly improved and he was beginning to show signs of alertness.

“He could move his extremities, understand what was said to him, communicate with others and was about to talk,” his lawyer, Michael Piuze, said in one legal motion. “His nurses, familiar with similar injuries, thought that he would ultimately walk out of the hospital.”

But on Dec. 12, 1993, Park was found lying beside his bed, and within 45 minutes he was placed in the restraining vest, which comes with long ties to “keep him secure in bed.”

Park was transferred to a constant care room, where a nurse was supposed to be present at all times.

On Jan. 9, when medical staff found him tangled in the vest and blue in the face, they called an emergency and began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

But there were problems; it took some time for the emergency team to get there, and medical staff enlisted the aid of a “custodian not trained in CPR” to help by performing the chest compressions while others left the area to find a hand-held mechanical ventilation device.

Insertion of a breathing tube also was difficult, as medical staff fumbled through “several attempts with different size tubes,” legal documents show. Eighteen minutes elapsed between the time Park was found and when he was placed on a ventilator.