MIAMI -- A lawsuit has been filed against Jackson Memorial Hospital after a woman whose partner died there claims she wasn't allowed to see her for nearly eight hours because she was a lesbian.

The lawsuit announced Wednesday by attorney Beth Littrell seeks at least $75,000 in damages.

In February 2007, Janice Langbehn, her 18-year domestic partner, Lisa Pond, and their four adopted children had boarded a Discovery cruise ship in Miami when Pond suffered a brain aneurysm and was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center.

Once Langbehn and her family arrived at the hospital, they weren't allowed past the waiting room because a social worker told them they weren't recognized as being family.

"He provided a warning: 'You're in an anti-gay city and in an anti-gay state and you can expect to get no information about your partner and no access to your partner unless you get before a judge,'" Littrell said.

Despite faxing paperwork documenting their domestic partnership from their home state of Washington, Langbehn was still denied access to Pond, Littrell said.

"In this case, of course, we have a durable power of attorney that not only allowed Janice to get information, but required the hospital to give her information," Littrell told Local 10 on the eve of announcing the suit.

Langbehn was eventually allowed to see Pond as her last rites were performed and her organs were donated, but she filed the suit "for Lisa, who was the love of my life and my soul mate who I miss every day, but I'm finding the strength right now to speak out so this does not have to happen to any other family, because what happened to us was very wrong."

The lawsuit also claims Langbehn sought Pond's death certificate so she could receive life insurance and Social Security benefits for their children, but was denied by the state of Florida and Miami-Dade County medical examiner.

JMH did not comment on the suit.

"We knew sign language," Langbehn said. "We could have at least signed in her hand while she could have felt it, and we didn't get to do that."