This Bad Boss Left a Morgue Attendant Working Double Shifts Around Unsafe Fumes
Daniel Ridge’s job as a morgue attendant — never an easy one — became a lot harder when his only coworker left.
According to a lawsuit he filed later, Ridge began working brutal 80-hour weeks at the understaffed morgue at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif. He sat at a desk just feet from 55-gallon drums of formaldehyde and uncovered containers of body parts. Over a five-month period, according to testimony, he worked all but two days.
When Ridge said he was suffering from the fumes, his manager Feuy Saechao told him to buy a $10 mask at Home Depot, according to court documents. Saechao made light of Ridge’s reports of seeping fluids and a backlog of amputated legs, testifying that she joined in on jokes about building a centipede.
Ridge, meanwhile, was deteriorating physically and mentally. He cried in the morgue, witnessed by Saechao and others, according to his complaint. He begged for time off to see his newborn son. A panic attack at work sent him to the emergency room with chest pains.
Ridge took medical leave to tackle his depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, the court heard. Upon his return, he learned that he’d been terminated, supposedly for job abandonment. Two officers escorted him out of the hospital, according to his complaint.
Already in a fragile state, Ridge ended up unable to work and, ultimately, homeless.
Feuy Saechao is our Bad Boss of the Month.
Ridge sued the hospital’s operator, Alameda Health System (AHS), alleging that his firing was illegal under the California Family Rights Act. Last year, a state jury agreed and awarded him $2.45 million. The case is under appeal.
Ridge didn’t appear in court for the verdict. He had become troubled and harder to locate after he began living on the streets, according to a statement from his attorney, and the judge appointed a legal guardian for him partway through the case.
The healthcare industry had once seemed like a lifeline for Ridge, who had a deeply traumatic childhood, according to court records. He trained to become a Certified Nurse Assistant and traveled on assignments for nearly 10 years before taking a part-time morgue job at Highland Hospital in 2006. At the time, he was 31 years old and recently wed; the job gave him a stable base in his hometown of Oakland.
Ridge had planned to stay at Highland for the rest of his working life, he testified. “My family members go to this hospital,” he said in a video deposition that was played at trial. “A lot of my best friends were born in this hospital. … This is my community.”
Ridge’s responsibilities included disposing of medical waste, returning gurneys to other floors of the hospital, and cleaning the morgue’s viewing room for families coming to identify or pick up their loved ones. The job had downsides — the morgue was grisly, rarely sanitized, and overloaded with often-unrefrigerated corpses that oozed liquid onto the floor, he said — but Ridge found solace in human interactions, just as he had in earlier hospice work, jurors heard.
Ridge felt that “people who had deceased children or relatives really appreciated him,” a psychologist testified, “because of his sensitivity and the way he took care of their loved ones after they died.”
In 2014, however, things changed. The full-time morgue attendant departed without an immediate replacement, leaving Ridge to pick up the slack. For months, despite being nominally part-time, he worked a punishing 12 hours a day, seven days a week, jurors heard.
Ridge was willing to tolerate such hours for a while, he said in a deposition: His first child was due in late 2014, and he wanted to prove himself worthy of promotion to the full-time position so he could provide health insurance and stability for a growing family.
But his boss Feuy Saechao, who was the lab manager and acting lab director, was cagey, Ridge testified, and suggested that he remain part-time indefinitely.
“How do you put a child through college when you’re working part-time for 30 years?” he asked in his video testimony.
Around the same time, Highland changed its procedures for waste storage and disposal. One of Ridge’s duties was “specimen decanting,” which previously had involved separating body parts from the formaldehyde-based solution in which they were stored, then chemically neutralizing the solution and pouring it down a drain.
The new procedure, according to documents, instead required pouring the solution — called formalin — into large drums that sat by a door just feet from Ridge’s desk, waiting for later disposal. Next to the drums were uncovered containers of body parts soaked in formalin.
Ridge reported to Saechao that the increased fumes were causing him light-headedness, shortness of breath, and blurred vision, he testified. He asked for a respirator. The viewing room didn’t have air vents, according to his complaint; an open door to the hallway offered him a small reprieve, but it subjected other hospital employees to the smell.
Saechao’s advice, according to testimony: Buy a mask at Home Depot.
Ridge bought the mask, but it was flimsy protection. For more than a year, according to his complaint, he spent up to 12 hours each week decanting body parts without adequate equipment — and a lot more time working near the drums of formalin and the vats of body parts. He feared that the fumes were doing permanent damage, both physically and mentally, he testified.
Ridge didn’t take parental leave for his son’s birth because he believed Saechao wouldn’t promote him if he took time off. “I wanted the full-time position,” he told the jury via videotaped deposition. “So I had to stick it out.” Instead, he begged Saechao for scraps of time with his newborn, he testified. “[I’ve] been working seven days,” he said he asked her. “Can I please leave a little early so I can go home and hold my son?”
Ridge finally got full-time status in early 2015, he testified. Around the same time, a safety officer for AHS visited the morgue, documenting many of the conditions that Ridge had reported — the formalin storage, leakage of bodily fluids, corpses on gurneys in the viewing room — and telling him she’d make a cleanup her “pet project,” according to Ridge’s complaint. Saechao saw the safety officer taking photos and appeared “shocked,” the complaint said.
A subsequent report by an environmental hygienist found that Ridge had suffered “significant exposure” to formalin fumes, according to court documents. The hospital gave Ridge proper equipment and hired a specialized vendor to take over the formalin processing.
By this time, however, Ridge’s health was already faltering. At one point, he collapsed in the morgue and was treated in the hospital’s emergency room for high blood pressure. He met with Saechao and others to discuss the effects of formalin exposure, Saechao testified, and also talked about the deep toll of his job.
“He was just crying,” Saechao said in a deposition that was played for jurors. “When we asked what it was about, then he started telling us, oh, his crying is because of what he remembers as a child.”
Specifically, said Saechao, the young Ridge had been traumatized by seeing a headless, limbless body in the street.
That summer, control of the morgue shifted. Saechao remained involved, but Ridge began reporting to Reshea Holman, the AHS vice president of Patient Care Services. Shortly after, Ridge was diagnosed with PTSD and depression. A later report said that his symptoms included hallucinating dead bodies; in a court filing, Ridge said that images of the morgue continue “to replay … during my nightmares.”
Ridge took a brief medical leave but suffered a panic attack soon after he returned. He went back on leave, extending it to the end of October, he testified. At trial, Holman agreed that AHS evidently regarded Ridge as being on leave — and paid him accordingly — but said he nonetheless sent Ridge a termination letter stating that, because he hadn’t showed for work, “Alameda Health System considers you to have voluntarily resigned your employment.”
Ridge wasn’t aware of the letter, he testified, and returned to work at the morgue on November 1 with paperwork for his leave. Holman instructed staff to tell the sheriff’s office to escort him out of the building.
(Saechao was not directly involved in Ridge’s termination.)
Ridge’s precarious life collapsed. According to court documents, his wife had left him not long after their child’s birth. After being fired, he told the court, he spent years “couch surfing.” Ridge couldn’t work; a later report by the Social Security Administration said he had “debilitating mental health impairments,” with symptoms including auditory hallucinations, an inability to concentrate, and paranoid ideation. During trial, a doctor testified Ridge had suffered brain damage because of AHS’s actions.
As his legal case against AHS dragged on, Ridge started living on the streets. His lawyers sometimes were able to find him, according to court documents, but he was confused and angry. In early 2023, the judge found Ridge incapable of directing the lawsuit and assigned him a guardian ad litem to represent his interests.
Ridge’s attorney tracked him down again just before the trial but got the same treatment: Ridge tore up the trial notice, and the court agreed to accept his previous videotaped testimony.
“He looked like he’s aged 10 years,” Ridge’s attorney said in a court filing.
Ridge couldn’t be found after the verdict, according to media reports. At the time of writing, it’s unclear whether he even knows that he won a seven-figure award.
» Read a declaration from Ridge’s attorney about searching on the streets for his client
The Employment Law Group® law firm was not involved in Ridge v. Alameda Health System. We select “Bad Boss” cases to illustrate the continuing relevance of employee protection laws for our newsletter’s audience, which includes attorneys and former TELG clients.
Ridge was represented by attorneys from the Law Offices of Phil Horowitz and Bohm Law Group.