Dr Shezad Malik Law Firm has offices based in Fort Worth and Dallas and represents people who have suffered catastrophic and serious personal injuries including wrongful death, caused by the negligence or recklessness of others. We specialize in Personal Injury trial litigation and focus our energy and efforts on those we represent.

Patient’s Fall at Mental Hospital Costs Pierce County $1.3 M

Pierce County WA has agreed to pay $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit involving a mentally disturbed patient who escaped out of a window of a county-owned mental hospital in 2004 and hurt himself jumping onto a concrete fire-escape landing.

According to documents in the case, which was settled Dec. 23 in Pierce County Superior Court, Jeffery Fontinel had been involuntarily committed to the now-closed Puget Sound Hospital in Tacoma.

Fontinel, 27, was in a manic state, court documents say, and was being held in a “seclusion room” on the hospital’s fifth floor.


Attorneys representing Fontinel and his family alleged he was not adequately monitored by hospital staff members and that the room was not adequately secured.

Fontinel climbed out a window, walked along a narrow parapet, then jumped to the roof of a skybridge that allowed him to reach the roof of an adjacent building. He jumped 15 to 20 feet to the fire escape landing.

Fontinel suffered multiple fractures in the fall.

If you or a family member has been injured because of the fault of someone else; by negligence, personal injury, slip and fall, car accident, medical malpractice, trucking accident, drunk driving, dangerous and defective drugs, bad product, toxic injury etc then please contact the Fort Worth Texas Personal Injury Attorney Dr. Shezad Malik. For a no obligation, free case analysis, please call 214-390-3189 or Contact Me Online.

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