Family claims woman was frozen alive in morgue

A California appeals court has revived a malpractice suit brought by the family of an 80-year-old grandmother they claim was prematurely declared dead by doctors then frozen alive inside a body bag in the hospital’s morgue.

A lower-court judge had dismissed the lawsuit brought in May 2012 by relatives of Maria de Jesus Arroyo against White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles over the woman’s 2010 death, on grounds that the statute of limitations had lapsed.

But a three-judge panel of a state appeals court sided with the family this week in agreeing they could not have known how Arroyo was alleged to have died until it was brought to light by a pathologist in an expert opinion he gave in December 2011.