San Francisco to pay $3M for hospital stairwell death

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a payment of nearly $3 million to the family of a woman who was found dead in a stairwell 17 days after she disappeared from her hospital room. A building engineer checking the locked stairwell at San Francisco General Hospital found Lynne Spalding's body in October 2013. The 57-year-old woman was being treated for a bladder infection and was described as disoriented when she left her room. The city will pay $2.94 million and the University of California will pay $59,000. UC was named in the family's legal claim over Spalding's death because its doctors and nurses were involved in her care and monitoring.