A mentally ill, homeless California man has won a $2.4million wrongful termination pay out from his former employer after he was fired while on medical leave.
But tragically Daniel Ridge may never see the cash, as he is currently missing and estranged from his family, including his ten-year-old son.
Ridge first filed a complaint against Alameda Health System after they fired him from his role at the morgue in Highland Hospital eight years ago.
In the time since, the same mental health struggles which required him to take medical leave have all but consumed him.
'He's gone. I couldn't even find him,' his attorney Lawrence Bohm told Mercury News. 'My client doesn't even know and will probably never appreciate what we did for him, but his family will never forget it.'
Ridge's mental health was so poor that a psychiatric evaluation found he was incompetent to testify on his own behalf.
He was initially hired as a part time morgue worker at the Oakland hospital in 2006.
However in 2014 he began taking on full time hours after his colleague took medical leave.
In 2015 the colleague retired and as the pressures of the job increased, Ridge began struggling to cope.
In February of that year the hospital altered its use of formaldehyde in the morgue which Ridge said led to him feeling 'dizzy' and suffering 'macabre' thoughts.
He filed a workers' compensation claim but his mental health got worse and he was increasingly plagued by 'intrusive thoughts of death and dying,' according to a case summary.
Ridge suffered from PTSD as a result of losing friends to gang violence which compounded his condition, Bohm argued.
He was officially diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, major depression and PTSD and began calling out of work in September 2015, including on one occasion to attend a three week inpatient clinic.
Internal emails revealed that his superiors began grumbling about understaffing and branded Ridge, 'unreliable'.
Despite returning to work, his bosses were skeptical about his abilities and suggested he be deployed elsewhere.
The same week, Ridge suffered a panic attack which landed him in the ER and was granted a medical note for leave until the end of October.
But when he returned to work at the start of November, he found his office had been cleaned out and he was escorted off the premises.
The experience exacerbated his mental health and Ridge then became, 'Unhoused, unemployed, isolated and angry,' Bohm said.
His withdrawal meant his family had to pursue his legal case for him through a court-appointed representative.
His team had to rely on dispositions after Ridge was deemed unfit to testify , something Bohm described as 'unprecedented' in his 24 year career.
Ridge's family plan to set up a trust to ensure that the money can go to his son. Bohm hopes his client might one day be found.
'He's caught in a whirlpool, and he's not coming out,' he said. 'The best we can do is help him to be comfortable and to help provide some of his basic needs.'
Alameda Health Systems plans to appeal the ruling.
His attorney Lawrance Bohm said his client was deemed unfit to testify at his own hearing, something he described as 'unprecedented'
'We are pleased that the jury found AHS did not discriminate against the plaintiff, nor did it fail to accommodate him,' the group said in a statement.
'However, AHS otherwise disagrees with the jury's verdict and believes that, when reviewed by the Court of Appeal, the portions of the jury's verdict favoring the plaintiff are not supported by the evidence.'