Family members who believed they buried their relative—only to later discover the relative was in fact alive and the body was misidentified—were awarded $1.5 million April 19 after a jury found the Orange County Coroner’s Office negligent by misidentifying a deceased body.
Following a three-week trial, jurors awarded the father, Frank Kerrigan, 86, $1.1 million and his daughter, Carole Meikle, 60, $400,000.
The family said that on May 6, 2017, Kerrigan received a dreaded call for any parent—a call from the coroner’s office that said his son, Frankie Kerrigan, had been found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley, according to Kerrigan family lawyer James DeSimone.
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