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Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

‘Here Is Your Package of Medical Waste’

ALBUQUERQUE (CN) - An Albuquerque family who say they found a stinking cardboard box leaking blood and medical fluids on their doorstep sued UPS, the dental office that sent the box out for disposal and the medical disposal company it was supposed to go to.

The Texas Denture Clinic sent a box containing a plastic bag of "sputum, blood, contaminated dental gauze and tubing" to Oncore Technology, a medical waste treatment facility, which refused it, according to the Nov. 4 lawsuit in Federal Court.

For some reason, the package was resent, again via UPS, to a house in Albuquerque where Otley Smith Jr., the son of Oncore's president Otley Smith Sr., once lived. But Natalie Roberts, Martin Maestas and their three children live there now.

Roberts, who was pregnant at the time, was cooking dinner when the package arrived. Her children went out to the porch to retrieve it, and brought in the stinking box, its cardboard soaked with fluids.

After having the children wash up and putting the box back outside, where it immediately attracted flies, the parents tracked down why the package had been delivered to them and where it was intended to go. They say the whole family was endangered and traumatized by contact with the bloody box, and all have undergone medical testing, which will continue, to assure that they haven't contracted a disease.

None of the parties in the lawsuit could be reached for comment after business hours Thursday.

The family seeks punitive damages for negligence and court costs.

They are represented by James Lyle.

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