Lawsuit says medical transit company caused woman’s death after she burned feet

A Clark County lawsuit claims a medical transit company forced a woman to walk across hot pavement in thin socks, leading to second-degree burns and causing her death over a year later.

Before she burned her feet, Marsha Belnap, who had Crohn’s disease and was susceptible to infections, was mostly homebound, said James Belnap, her husband of nearly 50 years. But she still had a good quality of life at home in Mesquite. She crocheted for neighbors and watched Fox News.

“Anyone who knocked on the door knew to just come in,” James Belnap said in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The suit against Lifetrans Inc., a non-emergency medical transit company based in North Las Vegas, states that Marsha Belnap was driven to a doctor’s appointment two blocks from the couple’s house and made to walk across a parking lot in socks. The suit alleges that Lifetrans is responsible for her death over a year after the injury.

After she burned her feet, she never recovered, James Belnap said in the interview. She spent more than a month in the burn unit of University Medical Center before being transferred to a nursing home. When she finally returned home, about a year had passed, and she needed home health aides.

A woman reached by phone at a number listed for Lifetrans declined to comment on the litigation.

The day Marsha Belnap burned her feet, July, 21, 2022, she needed to see a doctor because she had skinned her heel and had a sore on it, according to her husband and the complaint.

She typically used a walker, but he didn’t want her to walk, so, for the first time ever, they used Lifetrans. The company was hours late to pick her up, he said, and a wheelchair they provided quickly became nonfunctional.

Instead of getting another wheelchair, the suit said, Lifetrans employees “forced [her] to walk the distance from the van into her doctor’s office wearing paper thin socks in 120-degree weather on severely hot pavement.”

James Belnap said he and the driver walked his wife into the doctor’s office, each holding an arm. It was something the driver proposed, but he didn’t think there would be an issue, he said.

“I kick myself all over the place for that,” he said.

The company had a duty to think about that, said Tyler Todd, the attorney who referred the case to Betsy Jefferis-Aguilar, the lawyer who now represents James Belnap.

When they got home, she was flushed and bleeding from behind a knee, Belnap said.

An emergency room doctor determined she had second-degree burns, Jefferis-Aguilar said.

By about 7 p.m. that day, she was at the burn unit at University Medical Center, where she stayed for 40 days or more.

She became disoriented in the hospital and called people at odd hours. “All she knew is she wanted to go home,” Belnap said.

After her hospital stint, she stayed at a skilled nursing facility and bounced between it and the hospital. It was about a year before she returned home, he said. She had to have home health aides and eventually could walk about 200 feet at a time, he said, but never recovered from her injuries.

More than a year after the injury, on Oct. 18, 2023, Marsha Belnap died at age 67. The suit blames her death on “complications stemming from severe burns and subsequent related health issues.”

Jefferis-Aguilar said Marsha Belnap died of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which the lawyer alleged was caused by the chain of events that started with the woman being burned.

A copy of her death certificate attached to a probate filing confirmed the cause was atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

James Belnap said his wife had never been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

“I blame her suffering on what happened with the feet,” he said. “I blame her trials on what happened with the feet. What she went through is not for the faint of heart and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.