Napa State Hospital is being sued over the 2004 suicide of one of its patients, but unlike previous lawsuits against the facility for similar suicides, the wrongful death lawsuit is blaming something new -- the building.

Although Lorraine Moore lumps hospital and mental health officials in for responsibility of the death of her son Dale Shelton Jr., she claims in the lawsuit that the building helped make it easier for her son to take his life.

"Namely, the design of the facility was such that the hospital staff could not have direct line of sight into (Shelton's) bedroom from the attendant's station, thereby preventing defendant's staff from adequately supervising the wards to protect their health and safety," the lawsuit reads. "The inability to adequately supervise patients allowed (Shelton) to go into the bedroom undetected and hang himself."

Lupe Rincon, hospital spokeswoman, said the hospital couldn't comment on the lawsuit in detail, but a Department of Health Services investigation of Shelton's death found the hospital and its employees didn't do anything wrong.

The lawsuit adds to some challenges facing the hospital.

In addition to another wrongful death lawsuit over the suicide of former patient Norman Friedberg, Department of Justice investigators recently reviewed several past state and federal inspections as part of a probe they claim showed staff at the hospital failed to prevent suicides, assaults, unwarranted restraints and provided poor medical care.

In a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September, DOJ Acting Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman also partly blamed the building, but for assaults, not suicides.

"Reportedly, there are no bedrooms set aside to house separately patients who demonstrate the potential to harm others," he wrote.

Since 2003, Napa State has been instituting more holistic approaches to the way it tries to heal mental illness, resulting in what state inspectors have seen in the past year as a marked decrease in the abuse of patients and foul-ups in patient care. The changes, called the Recovery Model, also take into account emotional and spiritual aspects of patients' lives, aiming to instill hope in individuals with serious mental illnesses whose lives can't be repaired with medication alone.

Moore is seeking unspecified damages for her son's death. Court records show the first hearing in the case is scheduled for May.