STUART — Opening arguments are expected to begin Tuesday in the civil trial surrounding the case of a brain-damaged Guatemalan immigrant privately deported by Martin Memorial Hospital.

Opinion Zone Sound off on this story Editorial The illegal vs. the hospital

Attorneys for the hospital and for the guardian of Luis Alberto Jimenez seated the eight-member jury panel Monday, including two alternates, after a week of jury selection.

Jimenez was injured in February 2000 after a drunken driver in a stolen van hit the car he was riding in. Jimenez was heading home to Indiantown after working a landscaping job.

Hospital officials won approval in 2003 from Circuit Judge John Fennelly to privately deport Jimenez. Jimenez had cost the hospital more than $1.5 million, officials there said, costs they paid largely without government help because Jimenez was an undocumented illegal immigrant.

A nurse accompanied Jimenez on a hospital-chartered flight back to Guatemala as guardian Montejo Gaspar appealed the decision.

An appeals court later ruled that Fennelly did not have authority to approve Martin Memorial’s request, clearing the way for Gaspar to file a lawsuit against the hospital for false imprisonment.

By then Jimenez had been kicked out of two hospitals in Guatemala and had moved back to a remote village, where his attorneys say he lives today with virtually no medical care.

The trial is expected to last at least two weeks.