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Kristina Gaime, charged with killing her son in April 1999, faces a wrongful death lawsuit by the boy's father.
By CHASE SQUIRES
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 11, 2001
The father of Mathew Rotell, a 6-year-old found dead at his Land O'Lakes home in April 1999, filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday against the boy's jailed mother, Kristina Gaime.
Gaime, 36, is charged with murder and attempted murder and is scheduled to go on trial Aug. 20.
Authorities say she drugged Mathew and his brother, Adam, then 8, with morphine at the family's home and then loaded them into the family's minivan and directed the van's exhaust into the cabin.
Adam and Gaime survived. Gaime was later arrested.
She has pleaded innocent, and her attorneys have indicated that they may use an insanity defense, claiming in a court document that she suffered from "severe mental and emotional defects."
The civil suit was filed by a Tampa attorney for the boys' father and Gaime's ex-husband, Stephen Rotell, as the two-year time limit to file a wrongful death case expired. The suit makes no specific monetary demands.
Attorney William Rambaum represents Rotell in Pasco County's probate court. On Tuesday morning in New Port Richey, he filed a request to have Rotell appointed to represent his dead son's interests. Tampa attorney Kennan Dandar filed the wrongful death suit in Tampa in the afternoon.
Dandar said it does not matter that Gaime is in jail or whether she has any assets. One of the suit's goals is to hold people responsible, he said.
The suit also names Gaime's employer at the time, Hospice of Hillsborough, and says that a patient Gaime was tending to had reported that a box of morphine was missing. The agency failed to investigate, the suit claims.
"Even the saints of the world make mistakes," Dandar said Tuesday. "They made a mistake."
If the morphine's disappearance had been traced to Gaime, perhaps she would not have had the drug the night Mathew died, Dandar said.
Hospice chief officer Kathy Fernandez was not available Tuesday, and an employee at the agency said she could not comment without seeing the suit.
The suit also names psychologist Kathyrn Kuehnle, alleging she was treating Mathew at the time but failed to act on reports from other experts that Gaime might hurt her children.
She knew as early as February 1999 that Gaime could be dangerous but did not alert the court overseeing Gaime's custody of the two boys, the suit claims.
Kuehnle declined to comment.
"It's like dominoes -- one thing leads to another unless someone stops it," Dandar said.
Dandar said others may also be sued, but he did not identify them.