Source:
Los Angeles TimesCollege Hospital to pay $1.6 million in homeless dumping settlement
L.A. city attorney's office says the hospital left more than 150 mentally ill patients on skid row streets. The hospital denies wrongdoing in what prosecutors say is their biggest dumping case to date
By Cara Mia DiMassa and Richard Winton
April 9, 2009
Doctors at College Hospital diagnosed Steven Davis as suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. Doctors at the Costa Mesa mental institution prescribed him numerous drugs to deal with paranoid delusions that had led to an earlier suicide attempt.
But that didn't stop the hospital from hauling Davis into a van and driving him more than 40 miles north to downtown L.A., where they dropped him off outside the Union Rescue Mission. When mission officials complained to the hospital, the van returned and drove Davis a few miles south to another shelter. Davis wandered away without ever entering.
Davis turned out to be the key to uncovering what Los Angeles prosecutors described as the largest case of homeless dumping they've investigated to date.
In a settlement announced Wednesday, the L.A. city attorney's office said that College Hospital had dumped more than 150 mentally ill patients on skid row -- long a magnet for the region's most vulnerable citizens -- in 2007 and 2008.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-homeless-dumping9-2009apr09,0,5952498.story