Ribeirão Preto Hospital was ordered to pay R$160,000 after a man was mistakenly declared dead

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According to this process, the man was treated at Santa Lidia Hospital and was discharged after receiving treatment. On the same day, another patient with a similar name died at the scene. But the hospital mixed up records and informed the wrong family of the presumed death, without allowing relatives to identify the body before the funeral.

The mistake was only discovered during the funeral, when the man’s son received a phone call from his father, who was alive. Faced with surprise, the family members opened the coffin and realized that the body was not that of the relative they thought they would bury. The incident caused uproar and anger among those present.

The court considered that the situation caused “clear moral distress,” and upheld the decision of the court of first instance, which ordered the hospital to pay 80,000 Brazilian reals to the man’s son and 80,000 Brazilian reals to his sister. The value was confirmed by the Twelfth Common Law Chamber of the Court of Justice of São Paulo.

The rapporteur of the case, Judge Edson Ferreira, rejected the hospital’s request to reduce the amount of compensation. He stressed that the error “beyond any margin of tolerance” and criticized the defense’s attempt to use a medical report from the author to claim family estrangement. “The allegation that the family members did not have a good relationship falls under procedural bad faith,” he said.