Michael Jackson dropped from lawsuit against Santa Maria hospital

By Associated Press

A judge has dropped Michael Jackson from a lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who died at a hospital soon after she was moved to make room for the pop star.

Judge Rodney Melville — also the judge in Jackson’s 2005 child-molestation trial — on Tuesday dropped Jackson from the lawsuit against the hospital in response to a challenge from Jackson’s attorney Timothy Gorry.

Melville rejected a similar motion by an attorney for the hospital.

The attorneys could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and a phone message left for a Jackson representative was not immediately returned.

The family of Manuela Gomez Ruiz had sued Jackson and Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria for infliction of emotional and mental distress, claiming she was kept from critical care after she had a heart attack on the same day Jackson was brought in with flu-like symptoms during the child-molestation trial. Jackson was acquitted in the case.

The lawsuit said Ruiz, 73, was on life-support after a massive heart-attack and was moved from a two-bed room so Jackson could occupy it by himself, and complained of an “outrageous, circus-like atmosphere” in the last hours of Ruiz’s life.