Former LA County coroner’s investigator gets $8.4 million in lawsuit

A erstwhile coroner’s bureau researcher was awarded $8.4 cardinal connected Friday, Dec. 17, successful her whistleblower suit against Los Angeles County successful which she said she was forced into aboriginal status successful 2017 successful retaliation for raising suspicions astir the decease of an 8-year-old disabled boy.

A Los Angeles Superior Court assemblage deliberated for little than a time earlier uncovering successful favour of Denise Bertone, who besides is simply a registered nurse. She was hired successful 2002 and for years investigated the deaths of infants and children, according to her suit filed successful November 2018.

Lawyers for the region denied that Bertone was subjected to retaliation and argued that each actions taken regarding her employment were for legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons. They maintained she suffered nary damages oregon harm.

According to the suit, the coroner’s bureau received a lawsuit successful 2013 involving the decease of an 8-year-old disabled lad who was successful a coma aft being recovered head-first and submerged successful h2o and covering successful a top-loader washing instrumentality by his stepmother, the suit states.

The lad was taken to a hospital, wherever an organ-and-tissue-harvesting nonprofit, One Legacy, obtained support to person his organs harvested for donation aft his death, the suit stated.

But erstwhile the lad kept breathing aft being taken disconnected of a ventilator, the attending doc gave him a ample dose of fentanyl, a synthetic opiod utilized to dainty terrible pain, arsenic a “comfort measure” that alternatively caused cardiac apprehension and the lad subsequently died, the suit states. One Legacy past harvested his organs, the suit states.

Bertone investigated the boy’s decease and told her supervisors she believed helium died of a fentanyl overdose, but her bureau nevertheless wrote connected the decease certificate that the origin of decease was suffocation caused by submersion successful water, according to the suit.

Bertone went connected a aesculapian permission successful April 2014 and erstwhile she returned 9 months aboriginal she was not assigned to her erstwhile position, which she contended was a backlash for her speaking retired astir the boy’s death, the suit states.

In December 2016 her bureau changed the origin of the boy’s decease to consequences from a fentanyl overdose, according to the suit.

As a effect of not being returned to her erstwhile position, Bertone mislaid overtime wage opportunities, a car to instrumentality location and the quality to beforehand with the agency, according to the suit. Bertone was forced into aboriginal status due to the fact that to “intolerable moving conditions,” the suit states.