The parents of a 32-year-old nurse who worked at a Fairfax nursing home are suing the facility, alleging management failed to properly screen a new resident who passed the coronavirus on to their daughter and caused her death this spring.
Craig Ringo and Kim Bruner-Ringo, the father and mother of the late Brittany C. Ringo, brought the suit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Silverado Senior Living Inc. and other entities associated with Silverado Beverly Place Memory Care Community on North Hayworth Avenue.
The couple also are suing Harbor UCLA-Medical Center, alleging a power loss to Ringo’s ventilator contributed to her April 20 death.
“This case is about the decisions made by the corporate directors of (Silverado) that invited COVID-19 to walk through its proverbial front doors,” the suit alleges.
A Silverado representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Thirteen residents of Silverado Beverly Place and one staff member, Ringo, have died and 97 staff members and residents collectively have been infected with the virus, according to the suit.
“Ms. Ringo did not get infected with COVID-19 due to some unforeseen act of God or as a result of any condition of her employment,” the suit states. “Rather, she became infected because corporate decision-makers chose to skirt safety and infection control standards, some of which they themselves voluntarily adopted.”
Initially, the Silverado corporate directors chose in March to close their doors to family and non-essential personnel, claiming it was too dangerous to allow anyone inside the building other than the residents and staff members who cared for them, the suit states.
But those same corporate directors then decided to admit a new resident who had worked as a doctor in New York City, according to the suit.
On March 20, the new resident displayed a cough and fever and was so lethargic that the staff called 911 and he was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he tested positive for COVID-19 the following day, according to the suit.
The suit states there were no positive cases at the facility before the admission of the resident, who is called “Patient Zero” in the plaintiffs’ court papers.
“This decision to admit Patient Zero put at risk each of the existing residents and staff, for no other purpose than to make money,” the suit alleges.
Ringo, who was assigned to care for Patient Zero the night he arrived, had a history of diabetes and contracted COVID-19, the suit states. She began having a cough and a runny nose on March 23 and self-quarantined.
Ringo’s condition worsened and she was taken on April 1 to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where she was eventually intubated, according to her parents’ court papers.
Ringo’s health appeared to improve during the next two weeks, but an April 20 power failure at the hospital impaired the ventilator helping Ringo breathe and she went into cardiac arrest and was unable to be resuscitated, according to the suit.