Civil Suit Against Saldivar Dismissed

A civil wrongful-death lawsuit against “Angel of Death” suspect Efren Saldivar and his former employer, Glendale Adventist Medical Center, was dismissed Thursday because the plaintiffs could not present sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial, attorneys in the case said.

Saldivar, 31, is in custody awaiting arraignment on murder charges in the deaths of six Glendale Adventist patients between December 1996 and August 1997.

The suit, which was dismissed Thursday in Burbank Superior Court, concerned a 91-year-old man, John N. Schwartz, who was not one of the six patients Saldivar is charged with killing in the criminal case. Nor was it one of the 20 cases which Glendale police picked out for exhumation.

Schwartz’s family had claimed that Saldivar caused Schwartz’s death while he was a patient at Glendale Adventist in 1993.

“Because of the length of time that passed between Mr. Schwartz’s death in 1993 and the autopsy in 1998, the coroner was unable to obtain tissue samples in order to perform toxicology tests” to determine if poison Saldivar is suspected of using on other patients was present, said Christopher Nicoll, the attorney for the Schwartz estate, in a prepared statement.

There are at least four civil wrongful-death suits still pending against Saldivar, said Terry M. Goldberg, who is representing Saldivar in those cases. Goldberg said the dismissal was an important victory for his client, and predicted Saldivar would win his civil and criminal trials.

At a hearing in Burbank Superior Court this morning, a judge is expected to determine whether the four remaining civil suits have enough in common to be handled by a single judge.