$3 Million Settlement For Hospital Stairwell Death

San Francisco and the University of California have tentatively agreed to pay a total of $3 million to settle a claim filed by the family of a woman whose body was found in a San Francisco General Hospital stairwell 17 days after she disappeared from her room last year. “No amount of money will bring back the mother of these two children,” said Haig Harris, attorney for the family of Lynne Spalding. He said the sum being paid to her 20-year-old son, Liam, and daughter, Simone, 24, amounts to a recognition that there was a “systematic breakdown” in hospital protocols for protecting patients.