A Los Angeles-based concert promoter is among the defendants named in a lawsuit filed by relatives of a young Ventura woman who died during a music festival in Monterey County in 2017, allegedly because she wasn’t given proper medical attention for hours after she became ill from possible drug use.
Do LaB Inc. is named as the primary defendant in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit filed Monday by Susan Ybarra-Telias, the mother of the late Baylee Ybarra Gatlin, and Carla Gatlin, identified in the complaint as a second parent.
Other named defendants include Glendale-based RGX Medical and Richard Gottlieb, identified in the complaint as RGX’s principal in charge and the medical coordinator of the Lightening in the Bottle festival. The suit seeks unspecified damages.
Representatives for DoLaB and RGX could not be immediately reached.
The plaintiffs’ 20-year-old daughter died last May 28 at Twin Cities Community Hospital in Templeton of multi-organ failure, hyperthermia and dehydration after attending the five-day festival, also called LIB, at Lake San Antonio, according to the lawsuit.
Instead of having qualified medical care personnel available during the event, the concert organizers “essentially provided a sanctuary tent … staffed by volunteers for festival attendees suffering from a bad trip,” the complaint alleges.
The defendants’ alleged lack of medical preparedness “created a hidden death trap for festival attendees,” the suit states.
When Gatlin began showing signs of incoherence, incontinence, shaking and a high temperature, her friends, believing she had consumed drugs, took her to the sanctuary tent, the suit says. Workers left her there for six hours before they “finally determined that they should call for an ambulance,” according to the lawsuit.
Had the defendants abided by thei rown plans, which they submitted to Monterey County for medical emergencies, Gatlin would not have died, the suit alleges.