STORY: "California state employee awarded $1 million in whistleblower case," by reporter Jon Ortiz, published by the Sacramento Bee on March 7, 2014.
GIST: "California’s state hospital system and three of its employees must pay a combined $1 million award to a state hospital psychologist after a jury decided she was pressured to declare mentally ill patients competent for trial using questionable assessment methods and then fired for exposing the policy. Napa State Hospital psychologist Melody Jo Samuelson’s lawsuit ended with a monthlong trial and a verdict that she suffered retaliation for whistleblowing. A judge late last week affirmed the jury’s decision......According to court records, the state hired Samuelson in early 2006 and granted her privileges at Napa State Hospital that included assessing criminally accused patients’ fitness to stand trial. The records say she received favorable reviews. Not long after Samuelson started work, the state and federal government settled on changes to end civil rights abuses at Napa and three other state hospitals where mentally ill inmates sometimes languished without treatment. Samuelson’s court complaint alleged that James Jones, the Napa hospital’s chief of psychology, “made it clear … that he was committed to … returning patients to court as competent to stand trial.” To do that, Jones lowered evaluation standards and pressured staff to use unreliable methods to determine patients’ competency, according to the complaint. One assessment technique, the complaint said, used a “mock trial” method that prepared patients to answer evaluation questions by rote memorization. Jones’ agenda was to move patients out of the hospital and “improve outcome statistics,” Samuelson’s court filing alleged, but “patients were at risk of having their psychologists testifying that they were competent to stand trial when they were, in fact, not competent to stand trial.” Jones used the hospital’s peer-review process to pressure staff to go along with the fallible patient-evaluation methods, the complaint said.........In 2008, Samuelson was subpoenaed in a case that contended a patient had been wrongly assessed as competent to stand trial. She testified that Napa used inadequate patient-assessment methods. Shortly after that, according to the complaint, Jones, and two employees, proctor Deborah White and supervisor Nami Kim, together orchestrated a series of retaliatory moves that included making false statements about Samuelson, manipulating her credentials file and using the peer-review process to “extort” her. The complaint alleged that Jones, White and Kim then falsely accused Samuelson of committing perjury during testimony in a patient’s case, leading to the hospital firing her on Aug. 9, 2010. Samuelson appealed the termination to the State Personnel Board, which ordered her to be reinstated in 2011. But the retaliation continued, Samuelson alleged. Her complaint said her pay was shorted, that the department deducted contributions for insurance premiums from back pay for coverage Samuelson never received, and that documents proven false remained in her file.
The hospital assigned her to an entry-level position, according to the court records, instead of resuming a clinical job that would help advance her career."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/03/07/6213188/state-employee-awarded-1-million.html
See Psychologist/blogger Karen Franklin's informative post (which brought this story to our attention):
http://forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com/2014/03/psychologist-whistleblower-awarded-1.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
