FAIRFIELD, Calif. (CN) – Heavy security doors outside a Kaiser hospital’s neonatal unit hit a woman during a fire drill, the woman claims in Solano County Superior Court.

            Mary Ellen Davis-Spinetti filed a $100,000 personal injury lawsuit against Kaiser Foundation Hospitals on Monday, April 18.

            She was waiting by the elevators after visiting her newborn son in the neonatal intensive care unit when she was “forcefully hit without warning by double fire security doors,”  the complaint states.

            She claims a security guard and maintenance worker knew about the drill ahead of time because she saw them talking together moments before it happened.

            “Less than a minute later … the fire alarm sounded off with flashing lights – my instinct was to turn away and see what was going on, and I was then struck by two heavy hidden fire security doors. These doors are on a magnetic instantaneous mechanism system that are activated by the fire alarm. There is no tape or written notice or anything that shows to the public that there are doors there,” the complaint states. 

            Had she been holding her four-and-a-half pound son at the time, he would have been crushed, Davis-Spinetti says.

            She was so traumatized that she took a seat in the waiting room, where the security guard asked if she was okay. That was when she realized that he knew about the doors but chose not to warn her, according to the complaint.

            When she filed a complaint in the emergency room, a staff member told her that several other people had been hurt in similar accidents at other Kaiser facilities, including an elderly person who got pinned between security doors that had to be forcefully pried open by other people, the complaint states. 

            Davis-Spinetti says she was once an active person who loved to run, but was forced to adopt a sedentary lifestyle due to chronic back pain from the incident.

            She seeks punitive damages and $100,000 in compensatory damages for personal injury, premises liability, intentional tort, and general negligence.

            She also wants Kaiser to install a safety system, or at least tape demarcating the doors, to prevent others from getting hurt by the doors.

            Davis-Spinetti is representing herself in pro persona.