New York City has settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the family of a Jamaican psychiatric patient who died last summer on a hospital floor in Brooklyn for US$2 million.
The settlement was signed yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court before Justice Allen Hurkin-Torres.
It comes 11 months after Esmin Green, 49, collapsed and died at the sprawling Kings County Hospital Centre.
Green had migrated from Jamaica in the late 1990s to earn money for her six children back home.
A devout churchgoer, she had worked caring for the elderly and helping at a day care centre for children, before she lost her job. She then suffered from depression.
Green’s death was captured on video, showing that hospital staffers ignored her for hours.
Green, who had a history of mental illness, had been taken to the psychiatric emergency room on June 18 last year.
Reports say she may have been sitting in the waiting room for nearly a day, including an hour during which she lay on the floor.
An autopsy determined she had a fatal blood clot in her lung caused by "physical inactivity”.
The city Department of Investigation said it is looking into whether hospital staffers falsified Green's medical records.
A medical chart says Green was “sitting quietly in the waiting room” at 6:20 a.m., but the video shows she was dead on the floor.
Green’s death came amid mounting concern over psychiatric service at the Kings County Hospital Center, the only mental health provider for many poor people in Brooklyn.
In May 2007, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging abuse and neglect of psychiatric patients at the hospital, and that December, the United States Department of Justice began an investigation.
In February this year, the authorities issued a scathing 58-page report that found other problems, including that patients were not treated for suicidal behavior, were routinely subdued with physical restraints and drugs instead of receiving individual psychiatric treatment, and were frequently abused by other patients.
The report found that conditions at the psychiatric unit were “highly dangerous and require immediate attention.”
Source: Jamaica Observer
