California homeless man wins $2.4-million wrongful termination lawsuit, but he’s nowhere to be found

Eight years ago, Daniel Ridge launched a legal battle against his former employer for dismissing him from his job at a county morgue while at the same time fighting his own mental health demons.

The 49-year-old won a stunning victory last month when an Alameda County Superior Court jury awarded him $2.4 million in a wrongful termination lawsuit against his former employer, Alameda Health System.

But Ridge was not in court when the verdict came in. As the case dragged on, his mental health had deteriorated, so much that he was unfit to testify and eventually fell into homelessness, becoming estranged from his family, including his 10-year-old son.

His lawyers don’t know Ridge’s whereabouts and are not sure if they’ll be able to find him among the thousands of homeless people living in Oakland’s shelters and streets.

“There are so many unwell and unhoused people that live in large pockets,” said Lawrance A. Bohm, attorney for Ridge. “Finding him will require a tremendous effort.”

Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, echoed that sentiment, adding that there are limitations to what information shelters can provide.

“I’ve seen many times people searching for loved ones,” he said. “But there’s protections for people and their identity, so it’s a challenge when people get lost in the system.”

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What little is known about Ridge is in a news statement released by the Bohm Law Group, the firm that handled the lawsuit against Alameda Health System, which operates five hospitals and four wellness centers with 800 beds and 1,000 physicians, according to its website.

Property records show Ridge resided in Southern California or Northern California during the 1980s and 1990s, a turbulent time when the use of narcotics and gang violence rose sharply in the state, especially in larger cities such as L.A.

From 1960 to 1980, the state’s annual crime rate jumped from 236 to 888 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. By the early 1980s crime rates had decreased, but climbed back up to a peak of 1,115 per 100,000 residents in 1992, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank.

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Ridge was one of many Californians affected by this wave of crime. He lost six of his closest friends to gang-related violence, according to the law group’s statement.

When he was in his 20s, his uncle was killed in front of him by a co-worker who set him on fire with a Molotov cocktail. Two of his cousins committed suicide thereafter, the statement read.

“The terrible life of Mr. Ridge left him with PTSD that went undiagnosed or untreated for decades as [he] lacked the resources to treat his condition,” the firm wrote.

Despite the hardships, Ridge became a certified nursing assistant and found a job as a part-time morgue attendant at Highland Hospital in Oakland, one of the five hospitals run by Alameda Health System.

Ridge was hired by that hospital in June 2006 and for years received positive feedback in his evaluations. But things began to change by late 2013 when the then-full-time morgue attendant took a leave of absence, eventually retiring in late 2014, according to his wrongful termination lawsuit.

The court documents show that the full-time morgue responsibilities at the hospital fell to Ridge, forcing him to work seven days a week while still receiving only part-time pay, a condition that continued for about a year.

“This meant that, among other things, Mr. Ridge did not receive any employee benefits, including health insurance,” the lawsuit read.

Ridge alleged that he raised the issue about his long hours and part-time pay multiple times with hospital leaders including in late summer 2014, just before the birth of his son that October.

Shortly after, the lawsuit alleges, the hospital announced an opening for a full-time morgue attendant position. Ridge was required to apply and interview for the position, which he got sometime in December or January 2015.

But his pay wasn’t the only problem Ridge had raised with hospital leaders at the hospital during his two years working full-time hours.

He alleged that he was forced to use a landline and go to the hospital library on a different floor whenever he needed to research medical conditions related to the bodies in the morgue, unlike other employees.

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He also raised safety and health concerns when Alameda Health System changed how Highland Hospital disposed of formaldehyde.

He complained, according to the lawsuit, that the new process made him feel dizzy and caused shortness of breath, as well as blurred vision. He repeatedly asked for respiratory equipment but was not supplied with any for about 17 months.

Ridge also alleged he had raised concerns over sanitation issues and handling of bodies at the hospital. He said sometimes bodies were left on gurneys in the hallways outside of the morgue covered with nothing more than a bedsheet.

“The spilling and leaking of bodily fluids from dead bodies was not only due to a lack of body bags, but also due to the fact that bodies would occasionally be delivered to the morgue with intravenous tubes still attached to them and with needles and other hospital ‘sharps’ still lying on the gurneys,” the lawsuit alleged.

Ridge took it upon himself to keep the morgue area and hallways clean after noticing fluids on the floor for days, often having to work with decaying corpses just feet from his work station.

The Bohm Law Group said in its statement that the “mounting stress caused by the increased workload, lack of support, and mismanaged corpses began to trigger Ridge’s undiagnosed PTSD.”

In September 2015, Ridge was diagnosed with some form of PTSD and depression and was placed on medical leave until Oct. 4. After returning to work four days later, he suffered a panic attack.

On Oct. 13, Ridge visited his psychiatrist again who gave him a note to be off work for six days. During that time, he had a conversation with the leave management coordinator for Alameda Health System, who told him he was eligible to take unpaid, job-protected leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, and would need to complete the forms by Nov. 4, according to the lawsuit.

On Oct. 16, Ridge’s psychiatrist extended his time off from work until the end of the month, according to the lawsuit.

But when Ridge returned to work on Nov. 1 with his FMLA paperwork in hand, he was told his employment had been terminated and was escorted out by two law enforcement officers, prompting him to later file a wrongful termination lawsuit against his former employer. The Mercury News was first to report on the story.

Bohm said his client was doing OK until the pandemic hit in 2020. He said his client’s mental health worsened, before Ridge fell into homelessness and became estranged from his family.

On March 25, a jury found that Alameda Health System had wrongly terminated Ridge while he was on medical leave, awarding him $2 million for past and future emotional distress and $455,000 for loss of past earnings.

In a statement, Alameda Health System said it takes the mental and physical health of its employees seriously but it also disagreed with the jury’s verdict, suggesting it planned to appeal the ruling.

“After a thorough investigation, AHS determined that Mr. Ridge’s allegations were not supported by fact and that AHS acted appropriately and consistently with all laws and regulations,” the statement read. “However, AHS otherwise disagrees with the jury’s verdict and believes that, when reviewed by the Court of Appeal, the portions of the jury’s verdict favoring the plaintiff are not supported by the evidence.”

Bohm was surprised by the Alameda Health System’s response. He said the case was so obvious he won it without his client testifying in court.

“They probably spent close to $2 or $3 million dollars on their lawyers, trying to fight a case that we offered to settle for $500,000 in 2018,” he said. “Pennies for settlement, pounds for defense.”