Parents, Sister of Teen TB Victim Say They Caught Disease

WESTMINSTER — The parents and sister of a teen-ager who sued the Garden Grove Unified School District after contracting tuberculosis from a fellow student at La Quinta High School have filed a second lawsuit contending that they caught the disease as well.

In the suit, filed Thursday in Orange County Superior Court, Fred and Patti French allege an unidentified group of doctors was negligent in “diagnosing, treating and caring for those students at La Quinta High School who had been infected with contagious tuberculosis.”

According to the lawsuit, Fred French was diagnosed with “active” tuberculosis in May, 1993, and his wife and daughter Cyndi were found to have the disease five months later.

The lawsuit marks the first time that Fred French has claimed to have an active case of tuberculosis. In claims filed against the school district in June, the family members said they had tested positive for the TB bacteria and were given drugs to reduce the possibility that they might become ill in the future.

Only Debi French, their 18-year-old daughter who attended La Quinta High, had contracted the disease and eventually lost part of a lung as a result, according to the claim.

Earlier this week, Debi French filed a lawsuit against the school district and the Orange County Health Care Agency contending that they negligently failed to warn the La Quinta student body after they learned in January, 1991, that a student was found to have contagious tuberculosis.

Bob Ragsdale, one of the French family’s attorneys, said Friday that the family does not yet know the identities of the doctors involved in diagnosing those early cases. Eventually, he said, that information would emerge.

Ragsdale also declined to say how much his clients were seeking from the unidentified doctors in damages. “Obviously we will want to provide for their health care and so forth,” he said.