Patient-3

Young mother dies on the street after unsafe discharge from Sunrise Hospital

After losing her mother and suffering from a bout of alcoholism, Melissa Gallia checked herself into a Las Vegas addiction center to seek treatment.

Found dead on the ground in a parking lot two days later, the MGM employee and mother of two had succumbed to environmental heat stress on a July day that reached 107 degrees.

“What happened to Melissa should never happen to anyone else,” said Robert Murdock, a Las Vegas attorney representing Gallia’s family.

A wrongful death lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Clark County District Court, alleging that Desert Hope Treatment Center and Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center failed to notify her family of both her transfer to the hospital and her discharge.

“There was just issue upon issue, problem upon problem,” Murdock said. “Ultimately, she was discharged, allowed to wander around and died in a parking lot right from the heat.”

It was a call from the Clark County coroner’s office on July 2 that finally told Gallia’s husband, Bart, where his wife had been, according to the complaint.

That was after a Desert Hope nurse called him at 3:28 a.m. asking if he knew where she was, and he rushed to Sunrise Hospital to get answers. Desert Hope staff called Bart Gallia on the morning of June 30 but hadn’t notified him of the transfer until after she was dead, according to the complaint.

“The actions of Defendants and each of them are outrageous, willful, wanton, reckless and malicious,” the complaint reads. “In sum, Melissa Gallia died, and died alone, in a parking lot adjacent to Sunrise Hospital due to the actions and inactions of the Defendants.

“The law already requires that a discharge has to be proper,” said Murdock, the family’s attorney. “I can’t just discharge somebody and throw them out on the street. That’s, in effect, what happened here.”



Young mother dies after unsafe discharge from Sunrise Hospital