Carole Meikle smiled, leaned over and calmly squeezed the arm of her 86-year-old father, Frank Kerrigan, as they sat within the entrance row of the spectator’s gallery Tuesday, April 19, inside a small Orange County courtroom.
The second was almost 5 years within the making, capping a three-week trial that lay naked in beautiful element each procedural errors and negligence inside the Orange County Coroner’s Workplace.
Deliberating for simply three hours over two days, a jury awarded Kerrigan $1.1 million in damages and Meikle $400,000 after agreeing almost unanimously with each level of their lawsuit detailing how the Coroner’s Workplace’s induced them to bury a stranger as an alternative of a member of the family who turned out to be alive.
“There have been so many details, and so many missteps alongside the way in which,” mentioned the elder Kerrigan, a Wildomar resident who was incorrectly informed by the Coroner’s Workplace his son, Frankie, had been discovered useless behind a Verizon retailer in Fountain Valley on Might 6, 2017. “We simply needed the reality to be identified.”
Meikle, believes the Coroner’s Workplace marginalized her brother, who was 57 on the time, as a result of he was homeless and mentally in poor health.
“There’s no query that we’re right here due to the therapy that he acquired due to his station in life,” mentioned the 62-year-old Silverado resident.
Lawyer Norm Watkins, who represented the county, mentioned he was stunned by the velocity of the jury’s verdict, including the panel was clearly swayed by the plaintiffs’ arguments. Watkins acknowledged the preliminary misidentification of the physique was clearly a mistake, however there was no intention to deceive the plaintiffs. He mentioned the county will evaluation whether or not to attraction the decision.
When Meikle discovered her brother had died, she rushed to the Verizon retailer and was directed to a spot close to some bushes the place Frankie Kerrigan’s physique was reported to have been discovered. It was coated in blood and soiled blankets, main Meikle to imagine her brother’s loss of life was probably painful and violent.
The elder Kerrigan says he requested the Coroner’s Workplace if he ought to establish his son’s physique, however was informed that was pointless as a result of the decedent had already been recognized via fingerprints. Nevertheless, he later discovered that wasn’t the case.
When relations acquired Frankie Kerrigan’s purported belongings from the Coroner’s Workplace, objects gave the impression to be lacking, together with a black attache case and a watch he all the time wore.
On the funeral house, Kerrigan briefly had the casket opened in order that he may take a final have a look at his son. However he was so overcome by grief that he failed to comprehend it wasn’t Frankie Kerrigan.
The household held an elaborate funeral at Holy Household Catholic Church in Orange and interred the physique at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, about 150 ft from the spot the place the elder Kerrigan’s late spouse, Catherine Kerrigan, is buried.
Then, on Might 23 2017, the elder Kerrigan acquired a phone name from Invoice Shinker, a longtime household buddy who had been a pallbearer at Frankie Kerrigan’s funeral. “Frankie is alive,” Shinker informed him, explaining that at that second he was standing on Shinker’s porch.
The Coroner’s Workplace later publicly apologized, saying the physique that had been buried had been recognized via fingerprints as John Dickens, a 54-year-old Kansas native who had died from an enlarged coronary heart and heart problems.
The combo-up started when a responding Fountain Valley police officer informed a Coroner’s Workplace worker that, based mostly on prior contacts, he believed the particular person behind the Verizon retailer was Frankie Kerrigan.
The error was additional compounded when former Orange County Deputy Coroner David Ralsten obtained Frankie Kerrigan’s 11-year-old driver’s license picture and misidentified him regardless of apparent variations in weight and facial options between him and the deceased particular person.
The Coroner’s Workplace entered the fingerprints from the useless man into the company’s LiveScan system, an inkless, digital course of used to submit fingerprints electronically to native legislation enforcement businesses, the California Division of Justice, the FBI and Homeland Safety Investigations.
Fingerprint outcomes acquired by the Coroner’s Workplace contained al six-digit numerical code figuring out Dickens because the useless man. Nevertheless, the numbers went unchecked as a result of personnel had not been adequately skilled and have been unaware of the importance of the code, Bruce Lyle, a former Orange County assistant chief deputy coroner, testified in the course of the trial.
Kerrigan mentioned the jury’s verdict ought to ship a powerful message to Orange County and different coroner’s workplaces relating to the necessity for due diligence and correct procedures in figuring out the useless.
“It is a wake-up name for the county and each single county on the market,” he mentioned. “It could actually occur to anyone.”
James DeSimone, an lawyer who represented Kerrigan and Meikle, described the decision as vindication and expressed hope the error gained’t be repeated by the Coroner’s Workplace.
“However we nonetheless have issues,” he mentioned. “The issues are that it's nonetheless inside their purview for a coroner to establish somebody with a match of a photograph. And that’s what is absolutely harmful right here. As a result of the reality of the matter is, there’s lots of people who appear to be one another.”