Tacoma health system settles claims after patient found 9 miles from hospital
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- An elderly man with dementia walked nine miles away from an Auburn hospital in 2024.
- The hospital’s owner, Tacoma-based MultiCare, was sued for negligence.
- MultiCare confidentially settled the lawsuit. As such, the terms were not disclosed.
MultiCare has settled allegations of negligence and abuse of a vulnerable adult, among other claims, after an Orting man with dementia walked away from an Auburn hospital and wandered overnight for several hours and miles in 2024, court records show.
Gary Lay, who was 74 at the time, was discovered on a wet, rural two-lane road in Kent on a gloomy morning in June 2024, according to King County Sheriff’s Office body-camera footage, which shows Lay gingerly standing with support from a deputy.
The deputy asks Lay, a retired Boeing worker, if he knows where he is. Lay responds, “Yes,” but can’t give a straight answer and appears disoriented, the footage shows.
Lay had walked for more than 10 hours and at least nine miles upon leaving Auburn Medical Center where he had been admitted a day earlier for an evaluation related to his dementia, according to a lawsuit filed in May 2025 by Lay’s wife, individually and as the power of attorney for her husband.
The complaint in King County Superior Court alleged that Tacoma-based MultiCare, which owns the Auburn hospital, knew Lay had dementia and was a significant flight risk. It failed to properly monitor him, implement an adequate plan to prevent him from leaving or do anything to try to find him once he left, according to the lawsuit.
MultiCare settled the lawsuit with Lay’s wife for undisclosed terms and the case was dismissed on May 15, King County Superior Court records show.
The settlement’s details were confidential and MultiCare expressly denied negligence, MultiCare spokesperson Marce Olson said in a statement Tuesday.
“MultiCare has no higher priority than the safety of our patients and team members,” Olson said. “As a learning organization, we are constantly evaluating our processes to ensure we deliver the very best healthcare for our communities.”
Attorney Neil Stubbs, who represented Lay’s wife in the lawsuit, told The News Tribune on Tuesday that he couldn’t discuss the resolution because it was confidential.
Lay began to exhibit signs of dementia in 2021 — a broad term for symptoms that affect memory, thinking and social abilities, according to Mayo Clinic. Its most common cause is Alzheimer’s disease.
After wandering from his home in 2023, Lay was placed at an assisted-living facility in South Hill. He gradually declined and grew more agitated, leading the facility to seek to adjust his psychiatric medications, which required Lay to be admitted to Auburn Medical Center, according to Lay’s wife.
On his first day, Lay walked out of the hospital at roughly 11 p.m. without intervention by staff who saw him leaving, according to the lawsuit. At about 9:30 a.m. the next morning, someone called 911 to report Lay was disoriented in the vicinity of the 31400 block of East Morton Drive Southeast in Kent, the suit said.
Deputies who responded to the scene called medical aid to attend to Lay’s injured back, body-camera footage shows. He was subsequently in the hospital for two weeks of treatment, according to Lay’s wife, Marcene.
In an interview in May 2025, shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Marcene Lay explained what she wished would come from the litigation.
“I want the hospital to have a protocol or a system or something that never lets this happen again to anybody,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing I want out of it. It should not have happened to him and it should never happen to anybody else.”
