A 56-year-old Florida man is suing the Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables for emotional distress and failure to protect his private medical information after his amputated leg was thrown in the trash. In case you were wondering, standard hospital policy is not actually to throw amputated body parts in the trash but to incinerate them, as Reuters reported with details from the lawsuit.
“Rather than properly disposing of the plaintiff’s limb as expected and as required by Florida law, Doctors Hospital threw the Plaintiff’s amputated limb into the garbage, with tags indicating it belonged to the Plaintiff,” according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.
A month later, Timiriasieff said his family was contacted by homicide detectives investigating if he had been the victim of foul play.
Dumpster leg, eh? Sounds like just another day for Florida’s men in blue. Hospital officials released a statement saying that procedures are being reinforced to prevent similar situations from happening in the future, but it seems to me that if you have to reinforce policies to make sure body parts don’t end up in the trash, you have already failed the medical system.