Family of psychiatric patient to get $1 million from state

For the second time in two years, Georgia will pay a million-dollar settlement over the death of a patient at one of its beleaguered state psychiatric hospitals.

An apology, the patient’s sister said, might have resolved the case for much less money.

The family of Michael Ernest Webb, a 59-year-old Vietnam veteran from Gwinnett County, will receive $1 million for agreeing not to pursue a lawsuit against the state. Webb died Dec. 16, 2006, after nearly three weeks without a bowel movement at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta.

The payment will be the largest since a $1.25 million settlement in 2007 with the family of Sarah Elizabeth Crider. Foreshadowing Webb’s death, the 14-year-old from Cobb County died Feb. 13, 2006, after Georgia Regional’s medical staff overlooked a severe bowel obstruction.

The state admitted no fault in either case. Georgia law caps the state’s liability at $2 million.

One of Webb’s two sisters, Janie Webb-Miller, said the family filed a claim only after failing to get state officials to accept responsibility for the death.

“It probably would not have gotten to the lawsuit stage if somebody had just responded … to acknowledge that something was wrong,” Webb-Miller said.

She wrote to numerous state legislators, only one of whom answered her, and to Gov. Sonny Perdue. During negotiations before the settlement, Webb-Miller said, state lawyers declined her requests to set up a meeting with the governor.

“They would rather write a bigger check than get him involved,” she said.

Dena Smith, a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Resources, which operates the state hospitals, said Friday that officials would have no comment on the settlement.

Webb’s case was among those highlighted last year in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution series, “A Hidden Shame.” The series reported that from 2002 through 2007, at least 136 patients from the seven state hospitals died from neglect, abuse or poor medical care or under other suspicious circumstances.

The articles prompted an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. The agency has demanded significant reforms and may file a lawsuit that could force the state to spend millions of dollars to improve the quality of care.

The Justice Department said in May that Georgia Regional could have prevented Webb’s death by correcting conditions that contributed to Crider’s.

Webb was in good physical health when he entered Georgia Regional in November 2006 for problems that may have been related to his wartime service. On Dec. 15, a nurse disregarded a physician’s instructions and called an ambulance to take Webb to Grady Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. He was too sick for surgery and died at Grady the next day.

The Webb family’s attorney, Alwyn Fredericks of Cash, Krugler & Fredericks, said Georgia Regional violated Webb’s civil rights when the doctor refused to obtain emergency treatment.

The settlement came just before the second anniversary of Webb’s admission to Georgia Regional, the first in a series of events that beset the family: his death, the suicide of his brother and a decision to move his elderly parents into a nursing home.

“It’s really bittersweet,” Webb-Miller said last week.

She had hoped filing a claim against the state would help reverse conditions that have led to patients’ deaths. “And of course,” she said, “it has continued to happen.”