Imagine the scene: Your beloved grandmother has been hospitalized for a respiratory illness. And then comes the bad news — A nurse at the hospital calls to say your grandmother has passed away. You go to her room to gather her personal items, and that’s when your dead grandmother wakes up.

Well, that’s exactly what happened to a family in Brooklyn over the weekend following a mix-up at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center.

After being told about the tragic passing, the patient’s great-granddaughter paid a final visit to the supposedly deceased relative. “I just walked up to her and I touched her head, and when I touched her head, her eyes opened and she turned her head,” the great-granddaughter recalled. “When she did that, I started screaming.”

“That was a bad experience for me, because I never went through that, and I’m still in shock,” she added.

Not surprisingly, the family is already talking about possible legal action.

“It’s negligence on the hospital’s part,” the patient’s granddaughter told reporters. “We are looking at emotional duress, emotional stress — you know, that’s basically what our issue is.”

While the hospital has yet to issue a proper statement on the snafu, the family says they were told it was a simple mix-up. And one news report claims that the nurse got the patient in question confused with another patient having a similar last name.

Does the family have a legal leg to stand on? And even if they do, should they sue? Would you?

NY Family Outraged Over Hospital Identity Mix-Up [CBS 2]

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