Seattle Children’s Hospital faces new class-action lawsuit over deadly mold

SEATTLE, Wash. (KCPQ/CNN) – Seattle Children’s Hospital faces more lawsuits over its deadly mold outbreak.

A class-action lawsuit filed Monday alleges hospital managers knew about the mold for years and tried to cover it up.

When the CEO of Seattle Children’s Hospital admitted there was aspergillus mold on campus, it shocked the public.

The attorneys who’ve been studying aspergillus cases said managers have known since at least 2005 and failed take steps to remedy the problem.

Attorney Karen Koehler said, “This action is really targeted against the management, the building and engineer department of Seattle Children’s about a systemic cover-up that’s existed now for almost 19 years.”

In a previous news conference, hospital CEO Jeff Sperring said 14 patients developed aspergillus infections at the hospital. Of the six children that died of aspergillus, one of them was Logan Shaffer, an infant.

Logan was exposed to the mold in 2005 while he was at the hospital for heart surgery. The court documents say he died of a heart aneurysm caused by the fungus.

Attorney John Layman thinks the mold exposure goes beyond the operating rooms and he believes there are many more who have been sickened. “You have numerous children coming there without aspergillus and then after they’re their two weeks to a month they develop the aspergillus,” Layman said. “And that’s when we know have a poorly functioning HVAC system.”

Layman said he told the hospital about its contaminated HVAC system back in 2005 when he and a family filed a lawsuit against Seattle Children’s Hospital for aspergillus. He explained, “Through the process, we discovered that there were problems with the HVAC systems throughout the entire hospital, not just the operating suites. And you have a significant number of immuno-compromised patients that are developing aspergillus infections pulmonary or otherwise.”

Seattle Children’s Hospital has not yet commented about the newly-filed lawsuit.

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