Testimony to continue Friday in guardian’s lawsuit against hospital for deporting injured Guatemalan immigrant
July 9th, 2009 by Daphne DuretSTUART — The former attorney for the guardian of a former Stuart hospital patient privately deported to Guatemala in 2003 is expected to wrap up his testimony Friday in a civil trial that has become the center of national debates on immigration and healthcare.
Attorneys showed an 8-member Martin County jury videos Thursday of Luis Alberto Jimenez back home in Guatemala, where his elderly mother struggles as his sole caretaker more than nine years after the car accident that left him with brain injuries and an inability to walk.
At the time of the accident Jimenez, now 37, was living in Indiantown and working as a landscaper. He was living illegally in the U.S., and because of his status the staff at Martin Memorial Medical Center ended up spending more than $1.5 million on his care with little reimbursement from the federal government.
Hospital officials eventually won approval from Martin Circuit Judge John Fennelly to privately deport Jimenez. They did so on July 10,2003, even as attorney Michael Banks, who formerly represented Jimenez’s guardian and cousin by marriage Montejo Gaspar, tried desperately to appeal Fennelly’s decision.
Banks, who has been testifying in the case since Tuesday, recounted for jurors on Thursday his reaction to a call from another attorney early July 10 alerting him that Martin Memorial officials had put Jimenez on a plane headed for a Guatemalan hospital.
“I kind of cursed a little bit, and then I told him that there was sill a motion pending,” he said, adding that the other attorney’s response was:”Mike, I’m really sorry, that’s how it is.”
Banks, who on Wednesday told the jury that he and Gaspar would have agreed to have Jimenez sent back to Guatemala provided hospital official could prove they found a hospital to properly care for him, said he and a colleague spent several hoursafter that filing emergency motions in hopes of getting the hospital-chartered plane turned around in mid-air.
Those efforts failed. But appeals court in 2004 reversed Fennelly’s ruling, and Gaspar eventually sued on his behalf.
By then Jimenez has been either kicked out of or removed from two hospitals and was back at his childhood home in the remote Guatemalan town of Huehuetenengo, where he remains today.
Jurors on Friday will hear testimony from a medical expert from Guatemala briefly before Martin Memorial attorneys cross-examine Banks.
William King, one of Gaspar’s current attorneys, told jurors Tuesday that hospital officials acted unreasonably by using Fennelly’s ruling to forcibly remove Jimenez from the country.
Scott Michaud, Martin Memorial’s attorney, said the hospital was just acting in the best interests of Jimenez, who through limited cognitive abilities had expressed a desire to go back home.
The trial is expected to last at least an additional week.
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July 9th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Why should the hospital have to eat the cost of this man’s care? He worked here illegally and sent the money home…let them use that money THERE to care for him. It’s not the American Tax Payers responsibility!
July 9th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
This creep should have never been here in the first place. These illegals are at least partly responsible for our economic crisis.
Throw them all, and the lawyers and idiotic bleeding hearts that support them, the hell out of here.
July 12th, 2009 at 3:22 am
I must agree here and have said it many times before. If you come to this country legally and abide by the laws that the American people have enstilled than you should share our wealth. But if you are breaking the law by being here without the proper documents than you should have NO part of our system! Be it food, shelter, work, or medical assistance if you don’t pay into in you should not get it. Go home and fix your own country. Watch and learn.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Just what part of “Illegal” do these lawyers not understand. They are not to be here in the first place. We object to the spending of $1.5 million of our tax dollars. The Guatemalan Government should be held responsible for payment.
Send them all back to the rat hole they came from.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Illegal is illegal, he should have been shipped back as soon as he was stabilized. The attorney initiating this suit should be held liable for all costs if (when) he loses. This attorney is simply hoping for a big payday. If he gets hit with the cost of the “suit” he and other’s will think twice.