Jose Perez is pushing for the state support to overhaul the Grieving Families Act after his fiancée passed in what he believes to be a wrongful death.
Photo courtesy of Sally Lomidze
A grieving father who lost his fiancée after childbirth at Woodhull Hospital is advocating to reform of the state’s Grieving Families Act after Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed the bill for a second time.
A new bill seeking to revamp the Grieving Families Act would allow families looking for compensation following a wrongful death to seek damages for grief and anguish, not just financial loss, as the law currently allows.
The proposed bill, introduced by state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, describes the existing Grieving Families Act as “a wrongful death statute that is over 170 years old, and sadly out of step with our sister states,” which “prohibits the grief-stricken family from recovering damages for their emotional suffering from the wrongdoer.”
Jose Perez and his family have been rallying outside the Bed-Stuy hospital weekly since Christine Fields, his fiancé and the mother of his child, died suddenly after delivering via C-section on Nov. 12. Perez says doctors never gave him and his family an official reason for Field’s death, making him feel alone in his quest for justice.
“The trauma we go through, it doesn’t go away quickly. It’s not something that just goes away,” he told Brooklyn Paper. “I just feel empty. I just feel lonely.”
Fields had a birth plan and a healthy relationship with her midwife before her death, Perez said.
He told Brooklyn Paper the family went to the hospital on Nov. 12, because Fields was in pain and thought she was in labor, but returned home later that afternoon after a nurse was rude to them. They returned to the hospital later that night because Fields was still in pain, and were told the baby was in distress. Perez said that Fields said she did not want a c-section, but was taken to a surgery room for…
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