LUFKIN – A Texas mental health facility accused of ignoring a mentally disabled man’s pleas for help and subsequently causing his death, has motioned to dismiss litigation brought against it by the man’s father.
Frank Chapman (individually and on behalf of the estate of his son, Jonathan Chapman, deceased) of Houston County first filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on June 28 versus Jennie Weisinger of Huntington and the Burke Center, of Lufkin.
The suit claimed that Jonathan was a resident at the Burke Center, a community center that provides mental health and residential services, and died due to gross negligence and deliberate indifference by Weisinger, an employee at the center.
According to the complaint, Jonathan vomited continuously for hours while being restrained in a reclined chair. Despite his repeated pleas for medical assistance and requests to be taken to a hospital, Weisinger allegedly refused to help him or call for medical aid.
Jonathan ultimately died from aspirating his own vomit.
According to the suit, Jonathan “was deprived of his constitutional rights to reasonably safe conditions, to be free from undue restraint, to adequate medical care, and to protection from harm”, and that his death was “needless and could have been easily prevented had his basic constitutional rights been respected.”
On Aug. 26, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the case, for failure to state claims upon which relief could be granted.
“Chapman’s claims against the Center fail for two reasons. First, assuming the purported constitutional rights outlined in the first amended complaint applied in Jonathan’s favor, the first amended complaint fails to plausibly plead a policy or custom attributable to the Center’s policymakers that caused Jonathan’s injuries. Identifying no official policy endorsing inadequate training, Chapman relies, instead, on a supposed widespread ‘custom’ of being deliberately indifferent to having ‘appropriately trained staff in place to provide attention to its wards and that resulted in a complete failure to provide reasonably safe conditions, to keep [Jonathan] from undue restraint, to provide adequate medical care to [Jonathan], and to protect Jonathan] from harm.’ However, not only does Chapman fail to plead any factual content supporting the proposition that the Center’s policymakers were deliberately indifferent to a need for training (or that there even was a need for training), but the evidence incorporated into the first amended complaint – namely, the Adult Protective Services Abuse and Neglect Investigative Report – establishes the contrary: that Jennie Weisinger was fully trained to manage Jonathan’s needs,” the motion stated.
“Second, even if Chapman had plausibly pleaded a custom attributable to the Center’s policymakers that caused Jonathan’s death, the Constitution does not apply the ‘rights’ Chapman identifies in Jonathan’s favor. The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized similar ‘rights’ in favor of the involuntarily committed; but it has never extended them to persons who reside voluntarily in a government-operated group home. At bottom, Chapman’s claims fail on the pleadings as a matter of law.”
For violations of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the plaintiff is seeking exemplary and punitive damages, costs, pre- and post-judgment interest and other special damages in accordance with the relief he is entitled, and such other relief as the Court deems just and proper.
The plaintiff is Marisa Marie Schouten Allen of Martin Walker, in Tyler.
The defendants are represented by Joel Evans Geary of Waddell Serafino Geary Rechner Jenevein and James Matthew Welch of Brown McCarroll, both in Dallas, plus William S. Helfand of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, in Houston.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas case 9:24-cv-00116
From the Southeast Texas Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com