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Help needed for brain-injured patient being manipulated by family
I need urgent help for a friend whose husband suffered a brain injury. Manipulative relatives conspired to convince the hospital to deny access to his wife and then discharged him in care of a relative who she believes does not have his best interests at heart and who is refusing to allow him to see her or speak with her. She believes the relatives are trying to get their hands on a large inheritance he has coming that was just approved by the courts. She needs a lawyer in the San Diego area to intervene ASAP. The facts as related to me, some confirmed by witnesses, are as follows:
Tony suffered a brain injury Feb.7 while driving on a work-related incident. The accident involved a semi-truck. He may have passed out before the crash , one witness told his employer. He was taken to a hospital near the accident in Mission Viejo and diagnosed with a brain injury. In his muddled mental state the only phone number he could remember was his brother or sister, people who are trouble with a capital T. They came and removed him from the hospital against doctors’ advice. They took him to Arizona and held him against his will, not telling his wife where he was, and she was frantic. During that week he received no medical care at all. The relatives who are heavy drinkers plied him with alcohol, bad for a brain injury. Desperate to get home to his wife, Tony stole their vehicle but got lost. Police found him. He eventually came home, erratic and delusional, saying people were inside his cell phone, seeing things not there, acting paranoid, etc.
Neighbors, one an elected official and very credible, helped his wife convince him to go to a hospital. 911 was called and he was taken by ambulance to a local hospital. The evil relatives threatened to come to the wife’s home with guns; Tony in his confusion told them where she lives (they’ve been hiding from these people for many years after one tried to kill Tony's wife). The neighbors/landlords told them to leave and locked the gate. Tony told a Sheriff officer he did not want to go back to AZ with his relatives, who were accusing his wife of holding him against his will. He made clear that was not true. This was just before he was taken away by ambulance and a deputy confirmed he was not in his right mind.
Tony wanted his wife to stay that night in the hospital but she couldn’t because the hospital would only give her a chair and she recently had hip surgery and this was too painful. She left and came back in the morning to a nightmare.
The next morning the hospital told her they didn’t have her husband in the system! They refused to give her any information on him. I talked to some people I know at the hospital who said HIPPA medical privacy laws are in play here and apparently the hospital thought he was lucid enough to make his own decisions about who to see or not. His evil relatives were allowed in to see him and duped him into thinking his wife had abandoned him and didn’t care about him.
Later the wife ( my friend) and I went to the hospital to look for him, remembering the floor he was one. We found the room and went in and a nurse came in and promptly ordered us to leave. The sister and brother were there. I asked Tony if he wanted to see his wife and the nurse said “we’re not going to put him in the middle of this” and would not let him answer. He’d just kissed his wife and seemed glad to see her, though looked dazed and disoriented.
The wife has his power of attorney, given by him when he was admitted to the hospital, yet were allowing relatives to manipulate him and convince him in his paranoid state not to see his wife. The hospital called security who asked us to leave and we did.
I repeatedly emailed the hospital district director and a board member I know to clue them in that these are manipulative people who the wife believes are trying to turn him against her so they can steal a large inheritance he has coming. They did not talk to his employer during the week he was away (and they never told his wife where he was) and eventually he lost the job; his wife pleaded with the employer to restore it, and the bad brother called the employer in a profanity laced call.
Tony was discharged into care of a sister who lives locally. The sister is not allowing the wife to talk to him. Tony was left believing his wife abandoned him and didn’t want to see him, from what the wife can glean. His big fear was being left alone in a hospital; he is someone who normally won’t even go to doctors. He has no family doctor currently; the last one he saw retired. The wife is also concerned that the relatives may try to steal community property – money in bank accounts. And she knows full well the consequences of not treating a brain injury correctly – she suffered one herself years ago, was in a coma for 3 months after falling off a ladder, and takes medicine to this day to keep her from having headaches and seizures.
She wants the hospital held accountable for its actions, turning her husband against her and allowing people she had asked not to be allowed to see him to get in there when she was out and take control. She of course wants to be able to talk with and see her husband, and be assured that he is getting adequate medical care for his injury. She also needs financial protections.
It should be noted that their relationship has had strains; they had been living separately in a trial separation for a while but had reconciled and he recently came back home to care for her when she had hip surgery. He was NOT the one who wanted the separation and had been working to repair the relationship before the accident. Despite him straying in the past she loves him and wants the best for him. He may now lose his job and his wife due to the interference of these relatives, and nobody knows what his mental state is or if there’s medical treatment he should be getting. They are helping him apply for disability. The wife is also very concerned about how to pay the bills as she does not work, due to her own medical issues, and was totally reliant on Tony's income to survive. She has very expensive medications for her own prior brain injury and is totally distraught right now.
Can someone refer us to a lawyer in the San Diego region who could help? Or any agency we can contact for assistance? Besides the hospital we also talked to the police, who said this is a civil matter and they won't get involved.
Thanks for any advice out there.
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