Pregnant Inmate Who Lost Baby After Starbucks Stop Before Hospital Gets $480K Settlement Offer from County

Mar. 15, 2025

A woman formerly incarcerated in Orange County, California, will receive $480,000 in a settlement after she alleged that county employees waited two hours to take her to a hospital after her water broke while pregnant in jail in March 2016 – and even stopped at a Starbucks on the way.

Last Tuesday, theOrange County Board of Supervisorsunanimously approved the payment to Sandra Quinones to settle the federal civil rights lawsuit she filed against the county after alleging negligent treatment ultimately led to her losing the pregnancy, according toThe New York Times.

Sandra Quinones, who was 28 at the time, was six months pregnant when she went into labor during a 70-day jail sentence for possession of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance for sales, according to theTimes, which cited the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Quinones repeatedly pressed a button in her cell requesting help for two hours before anyone responded, the paper reported, citing the complaint.

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Quinones' lawyer, Richard P. Herman, wrote in the April 2020 complaint that the county employees decided not to call an ambulance and took her to the hospital on a “nonemergency basis,” leaving her in the back of a van while they stopped at a Starbucks on the way, according to theTimes. It is unclear how long the county employees were at the cafe before they ultimately brought Quinones to the Globe Medical Center in Anaheim.

While the county’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the agreement, Quinones must formally accept the settlement before it is finalized, according to theOrange County Register.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department had no comment.

“That’s a very good result for someone badly treated in the jail,” Herman told theRegisterlast Wednesday. “This poor woman, she’s in jail having a miscarriage and, instead of calling an ambulance, they take her to the hospital in a patrol car and the cops stop at Starbucks while she’s bleeding.”

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Herman also told theRegisterthat Quinones, now 34, is homeless and mentally ill, while theTimesreported that the lawsuit says she has been living on the streets and in county custody intermittently since the incident. She is currently living with her mother, according to theLos Angeles Times.

Quinones' “homelessness stems from her inability to function and take care of her affairs after the incident as a result of the severe emotional harm in combination with her mental impairments,” Herman wrote in the lawsuit, according to the outlet.

In October 2020, a district court judge dismissed the case after agreeing with Orange County that the statute of limitations had passed, but an appeals court reversed the decision in December 2021 and sent the case back to the district court, the newspaper reported.

source: people.com