On Dec. 21, 2015, plaintiffs’ decedent Sandra Herrera, 28, presented to Torrance Memorial Medical Center, in Torrance, with complaints of abdominal pain after suffering one week of nausea, vomiting and a fever that got worse 48 hours before she arrived. She was treated with intravenous pain medications, but became unresponsive and died in the emergency room within a few hours of her arrival. The Los Angeles County coroner determined that the cause of death was pulmonary hypertension with a contributing factor of a chronic kidney infection. The decedent’s cohabitant, Douglas Lopez Mendoza, acting as the representative of the decedent’s estate and as the guardian ad litem for her minor son, Byron Lopez-Herrera, sued Torrance Memorial Medical Center and the emergency room physician who ordered the intravenous pain medication, Dr. Sripha Chan. Plaintiffs’ counsel argued that the defendants failed to provide the decedent with an interpreter and that the intravenous pain medication ordered by Chan caused the decedent’s respiratory suppression and death. Defense counsel argued that the decedent’s death was due to her prior medical conditions, which were unknown to the decedent and to her medical care providers. Counsel contended that the decedent’s previously undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions included pulmonary hypertension, cardiomegaly, chronic kidney infection, ruptured renal calyx and sepsis., Sandra Herrera, 28, died from pulmonary hypertension and a chronic kidney infection. She was survived by her cohabitant/boyfriend, Douglas Lopez Mendoza, then 37, and her son, Byron Lopez-Herrera, then 9. (Lopez Mendoza and Herrera lived together as husband and wife, but were never legally married.) Lopez Mendoza and Byron sought recovery of wrongful death damages for the loss of Herrera.