Podcast Episode: UAMS Medical Center Controversies
Pip: When a hospital's legal team argues that keeping track of sponges inside a human body is simply not the surgeon's problem, you know you're somewhere interesting.
Mara: This episode covers recent posts on A Higher Law by LauraLynnHammett — medical negligence, a textbook clash over surgical accountability, and a case of forced treatment where no judge and no counsel were ever involved. Let's start with the sponge.
The Surgeon's Duty and the Blame That Travels Downhill
Mara: The central question here is whether a surgeon can hand off responsibility for counting surgical sponges to a nurse — and what happens when that argument meets a first-year torts textbook.
Pip: The brief filed by lawyers for UAMS physicians Joseph Margolick and Natalie Applebaum makes the position explicit: "The standard of care does not require the physician-defendants to actually count and confirm the number of sponges used during Mr. Wesson's surgery. That is the RN circulator's responsibility."
Mara: So the upshot is that a sponge left inside a patient becomes the nurse's legal problem, not the surgeon's — which is precisely the argument the defense is running in a motion for summary judgment.
Pip: Except that argument runs straight into a wall. Thompson v. Baptist Memorial Hospital, a Mississippi Supreme Court case from 2018, is cited directly in the post alongside Prosser, Wade and Schwartz's Torts, fifteenth edition — the same textbook used at the UAMS-affiliated law school. The case holds that a surgeon's duty to account for all sponges is nondelegable. You can assign the task; you cannot assign the legal duty.
Mara: That tension — between what the defense brief claims and what a standard torts text says — is the spine of the post titled Dr. Margolick and the Textbook Case of Negligence. The author is a co-plaintiff in a related case against the same physicians, writing as a first-year law student, not as counsel.
Pip: Which makes the textbook citation feel less like a footnote and more like a pointed homework assignment turned in publicly.
Mara: The post also notes that the complaint names the nurses and patient care technicians alleged to be culpable alongside the physicians. The finger-pointing the defense brief invites appears to be going in multiple directions at once.
Pip: The sponge accountability question turns out to be the tidier half of what's alleged at UAMS. The other half involves what happened to a patient who refused treatment entirely.
When Refusal Becomes Confinement
Mara: A post titled Arkansas denied counsel before imprisoning a TBI patient lays out what happened when a traumatic brain injury patient at UAMS refused treatment — and the medical team proceeded anyway, for two weeks, without a judge or appointed counsel.
Pip: The post documents a cocktail of sedating drugs administered across the first twenty-three hours, including fentanyl, lorazepam, haloperidol, dexmedetomidine, and olanzapine — while staff claimed the patient's impaired speech had no pharmaceutical explanation.
Mara: The required petition under Arkansas Code Annotated Section 20-47-207 was never filed. No judicial oversight, no counsel. A second post, Producer Wanted, notes that video and documentary evidence exists and that the UAMS Police Department declined to receive it.
Pip: The author negotiated the patient's release after two weeks. Arkansas is now spending considerably more on litigation than the hundred and fifty dollars the statute sets as the fee for patient counsel.
Mara: Nondelegable duties, undocumented drug orders, a missing petition — the throughline is accountability that gets passed around until it lands nowhere.
Pip: Until someone starts citing the textbook. More from A Higher Law next time.
Podcast Episode: Family Court Corruption And Custody Battles
Pip: There's a particular kind of irony in a system built to protect children that ends up being the thing children need protecting from — and A Higher Law has been documenting exactly that.
Mara: This episode covers work by LauraLynnHammett across two connected territories: alleged corruption in the family courts, centered on a minor's counsel named William Spiller Jr., and what happens to ordinary parents once the support bureaucracy gets its hands on a case.
Pip: Let's start with the history behind Spiller's rise — and what that history makes his alleged conduct so hard to look away from.
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Stanley Mosk, the Spillers, and the Weight of Legacy
Mara: This segment is about a lineage — how a father's fight for racial dignity became the ladder his son climbed into a position of court-appointed power, and what that son is alleged to have done with it.
Pip: The post draws a direct line from William Spiller Sr., who crusaded for Black golfers' right to compete in the PGA, to his son's career as a minor's counsel. The Los Angeles Times account of the elder Spiller captures what that exclusion cost him: "Decades after golf tournaments threw him out because he was black, Spiller would jolt awake, sit up in his bed, shout the names of the long-deceased people who ran those tournaments. Sometimes he would grab his gun, stalk into the living room, wave the pistol, promise 3 a.m. revenge."
Mara: That's a man whose wound never closed. The post's argument is that his son inherited the access that wound eventually unlocked — Stanley Mosk's civil rights work with Spiller Sr. opened doors in Los Angeles legal circles — but did not inherit the cause.
Pip: Junior became, by the post's account, the go-to attorney for judges who had already picked a winner in custody disputes. The post describes his victims as predominantly Black women, and names specific cases: Tanisha Foster, whose daughter was conceived with the late rapper Nipsey Hussle; Donicia Augustus; Maria Chiarello. The throughline is money — appointed minor's counsel fees, largely taxpayer-funded, with minimal oversight.
Mara: The post puts it plainly: "The judges are the slave owners in the scenario of these unjust family law rulings. William Spiller is an overseer." That framing is deliberate and pointed.
Pip: A guest post flags a federal case against Spiller and Los Angeles County — dismissed in what the Post Modern Justice Media Project calls a "blatantly corrupt ruling." The corruption alleged isn't just individual misconduct; it's a system that then honored Spiller as a keynote speaker at a conference on cultural competency in family law.
Mara: Which brings us to what the families caught in that system actually face once the support machinery takes over.
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When the Support System Becomes the Trap
Mara: This segment is about what happens to a parent after the court decides — not just who wins custody, but how the financial apparatus then operates on the losing side, sometimes for decades.
Pip: The post introduces a composite figure called "Sam" — a licensed schoolteacher, church-going, described as genuinely good with young people — who was given essentially no contact with her own child across an eighteen-year family law case. Here is the financial picture the post lays out: "Sam is supposed to pay the ex $100,000 in child support arrears. Sam is not allowed to have a passport. There is a threat of losing Sam's teaching credentials. There is a threat of losing Sam's driver's license."
Mara: So the upshot is a parent who cannot travel, cannot work in her profession, and has money seized from her bank account and paychecks — while the ex earns over a hundred thousand dollars a year from a government job.
Pip: Sam connected with this reporting specifically because she had been investigating Spiller — which puts both segments in direct conversation. The post's closing question is blunt: once a parent tries to leave a relationship, bureaucrats including judges and DCSS workers claim authority over the child's best interests, take a percentage for themselves and their associates, and ask whether any of this actually serves the child. The answer the post offers is: not a chance.
Mara: The pattern across both segments is the same — a structure that looks like protection but functions as extraction, and the people inside it rarely have the standing to say so.
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Pip: A father haunted by golf tournaments. A son appointed to protect children. A teacher who can't renew her passport. The thread connecting all of it is who gets to define justice and who pays for the definition.
Mara: Next time, we'll see what else A Higher Law is watching.
UAMS Math: Immunity = Entitlement
UAMS knows that over 71 of its employees forced a man to take several sedating and pain relief medicines, including fentanyl, against his will. UAMS knows the employees bound him to the bed to prevent him from leaving with his mother – me.
In response to a pro se lawsuit (which we would be happy to turn over to counsel on contingency), the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas Counsel Sherri Robinson is claiming that the employees have immunity from civil suit.
The University does not explain why the UAMS PD has not filed criminal charges on any of the participants. Fifty-two of the batterers are still employed by UAMS.
This is why we think Nurse Shannon Cobb (or any of the defendants) should not be dismissed:
UAMS Says “We get to break the law” (paraphrased)
My son and I are suing the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas, along with 81 individual medical providers and police or security officers at UAMS. How did we get here?
In January 2024, my son was injured when he jumped about 10 feet from a falling ladder at a job site. He later said that when his head hit the ground, it hurt like a “motherfucker.” I believe him.
But Sean is tough. The kind of tough that comes with being uninsured, frugal, and deeply distrustful of the medical establishment. He didn’t fall far from the tree.
He wanted to recover at home—in his own bed, eating his own food, with his daughter and his dog moving in and out of the kitchen and living room.
That’s not what happened.
Triage Nurse Nathan Ernst and others in the UAMS emergency department decided Sean was not leaving. Without his consent, he was injected with fentanyl. By the time his girlfriend located him the next morning, he had been restrained to a bed, stripped naked for reasons no one has explained, and denied food and water.
His condition deteriorated quickly.
He was heavily sedated—given a combination of drugs that included sedatives and psychiatric medications. When he arrived at UAMS, the tiny bones in his left ear were intact. By the end of his stay, they were dislocated. His sodium levels dropped from normal to dangerously low.
UAMS refused to release him to me for two weeks.
When they finally did, he was in worse condition than when they took control of his care. Within days of being home, his sodium levels returned to normal. He began working through aphasia caused by the drugs and trauma—damage that had been compounded by sustained pressure on the left side of his brain. He also realized he had partial hearing loss and began learning to read lips.
There are laws against confining or restraining someone without consent or a lawful court order. Without consent, a petition must be filed. Legal counsel must be provided to the patient.
There are laws against making harmful or offensive contact without consent. It’s called battery.
UAMS physicians—and their $160,000-a-year Senior Associate General Counsel, Sherri Robinson—know this.
So what is their defense?
They deny everything. They say surveillance footage no longer exists. They claim immunity because they are government employees. And they argue that before we can recover anything, we must “exhaust” insurance coverage—despite the insurer’s position that no negligence occurred, and therefore nothing will be paid.
That is not an exaggeration.
Read their motion to dismiss the claims against Nathan Ernst, along with our responses.
You can watch some videos we took at the hospital here.
Attorney Glenn Ritter Tries to Obtain Plaintiff’s Social Security Number
Dr. Josph Margolick at UAMS forced a man to stay in the hospital for two weeks and ran up a bill of over $100,000. That included charges for drugs the man did not want to take, such as fentanyl. There were surveillance videos taken that would prove what actually happened at the state medical facility.
But Dr. Margolick apparently did not think those videos would exonerate him from claims that he falsely imprisoned the man. He allowed the videos to be destroyed.
Now he is trying to obtain the unwilling patient’s employment records, including his social security number, as evidence of his “condition and abilities.” I wouldn’t trust Margolick or his attorney with someone’s social security number.
Here is our latest plea to the court to protect the unwilling patient from further violations of his privacy.
UAMS False Imprisonment and Battery Victim Speaks Out
Guest post by Sean Lynn, Laura Hammett’s son.
They’re really playing that you’re trying to be an unlicensed lawyer like that’s their whole case. Then you chime back that I’m not getting a compensation for something. Which kinda means something like what they’re saying. Either way the whole topic is stupid like. You’re saying we want to get paid. Then ya. You say they’re trying to start this whole new shit about how we can’t publicize the case. Like with the automatic message they leave that we can’t publish their email? Or the case? Like. What. Did they get immunity to being published by being a lawyer? Their every word is top secret now? It’s really a stupid case and shows how corrupt the USA legal system is. In such a simple case. I mean the guy who didn’t want to be locked in the hospital was basically beaten up for trying to leave. Then tied to a cot and stuck in his ass with needles. Like living in a horror movie. Drip fed sugar water. Then that it’s systematic for them to do that to people? I’m wondering why you’re responding to their emails? To stir their arguments out? I’d almost vote for you to let them talk more and you really don’t have much else to say. They have a defense to make and the best they can do is to criminalize you? For trying to sue them? They’re basically digging their own hole. I guess you could see how much more hole they can dig themselves.
What was it “she opened a case on amount of medical professionals” like they are medical professionals makes them all immune. It’s total classism. A class v class argument against your not being a part of their class. Like the police officer who says in court “im a police officer” and that’s why they killed someone. It’s ok to do anything if you’re in one of those higher class.
It would be fun to throw in that. Exactly the same thing happened with Steve O from jackass show. He injured himself doing some stunt. They hospitalized him. When he woke up he ran out of the hospital and jumped in a cab and left. The difference is that he was in California. And he just left. Instead of being beaten by a dozen men and tied down and locked in the hospital for some days. While physically tortured. And they didn’t blast high volume noises in his ears for days on end while drugged and tied up. What happened with Steve O is what should’ve happened to me. They let him leave. Watched some crazy injured patient run out of the hospital. Like. Aw dang that guy just left? And wrote up a AMA report. The end.
What happened was they physically abused me while I was ill and wouldn’t let me go home because they couldn’t profit from me anymore if I went home.
It does really tick me off that people are like that.
Why has Arkansas law enforcement not arrested these UAMS clinicians?
This is why we believe Karrar Aljiboori; Natalie J. Applebaum; Timothy J. Baer; Jarred M. Baxter; Alexis Beavers; Rebekah Danielle Beene; Britney M. Beumeler; Kristy Bienvenu; Jennings R. Boyette; Carol Brizzolara; Cejae Brown; Elizabeth Brown;
Nolan R. Bruce; Amber Bryant; Elizabeth Cate; Christopher S. Cathcart; Shannon Cobb; Benjamin L. Davis; Prashanth Reddy Damalcheruvu; Rebekah Davis; Joseph P. Deloach; Amanda Diehl; Jaicey Dowd; Nathan Ernst; James Fitsimones; Chrystal T. Fullen; Macall Gilmartin;Tyler Gray; Emily Gray; Jordan W. Greer; Shannon Hankins; Brandon Hearn; Rachel Hill; Mi-Ran Kim;
Mary K. “Katie” Kimbrough; Alyssa Kirkpatrick; Jacob Langston; Eric Lambert; Payton D. Lea; Ariana Limon; Noah Lloyd; Joseph F. Margolick; Sarah E. Martin; Tyree McClure; Zachary A. McConnell; Elizabeth McNulty; Jordan Millsapps; Anna G. Morris; Sriram Navuluri; Derrick C. Nichols; Mason Noble; Kristina Ong; Na’Kika Perkins; Erika A. Petersen; Brittany Presson; Nathan Redding; Edward Reece; Arthur Rezayev; Brenda Roberts; Tyler K. Rose; Christian Rosenbaum; Kristen Rosenbaum;
Tonya R. Sanders; Jackson Sargent; Hannah Sclimenti; Carmen Shaw; Christian Spallino; Caroline Steele; Krista J. Stephenson; Jordan M. Takasugi; Evelyn Tipton; Marisa D. Tran; Julien P. Vinas; Charles Waters; Adam S. Watkins; Derrick Wilkes; Edward Williams; Lyrex Williams; Kesley M. Winn; Leslie Witt; and Susan Zaleski Norsworthy are guilty of criminal false imprisonment and battery.
A man was forcibly administered controlled substances, including fentanyl, restrained naked to a hospital bed, starved, and left in that condition for nearly two weeks—despite having no injury below the neck at the time of admission, a GCS of 13 or 14, and reported his pain level as 2 out of 10 (“hurts a little”). Read the full report made by UAMS. Counsel in the civil suit swear the report “speaks for itself.”
A great place to start is on page 71. This section was suppressed until 15 months after the patient left AMA. There is an error repeated throughout that UAMS refused to correct. The initial injury was caused by a jump from about the ten-foot-high rung of a falling ladder. Not a “35-foot” fall. Big difference! UAMS doctors decided that the EMT who showed up at the site after the accident knew better than the only witness, the man who jumped to save his life. (There were a steep slope and a power line close by.)
I witnessed it. The medical report left a lot out. For example, the defendants admit to using four point restraints, but do not mention who captured and held the man to the bed. It took several people at once. Eventually, I was able to get him out by threatening a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, deprivation of rights under color of law.
When UAMS refused to discuss a settlement, we filed a claim at the Arkansas Claims Commission. It was only against the university medical center. After a year without thinking up a viable defense, UAMS decided we must exhaust all insurance before the university would need to answer interrogatories or produce documents.
So, we filed a lawsuit on 71 clinicians that were definitely involved and 10 Doe defendants.
Absolutely, 100%, beyond a reasonable doubt, these professors and students at the university hospital forced the patient to stay for two weeks and battered him continually. When they finally let him go AMA, they prescribed only salt tablets, acetaminophen, and a headache medicine that can be fatal if stopped suddenly. Their non-consenting patient obviously was not in imminent danger of death.
Then they sent him a bill for $46,000.
In our lawsuit, we listed both negligent and intentional torts. Insurance will only pay for negligent acts. The insurance decided there was no negligence.
These medical providers were, according to Steve Hillis of Gallagher Risk Management and The Doctors Insurance, acting intentionally. Or at least with reckless disregard for the rights of another.
Think about this. UAMS doctors and lawyers have sworn that the clinicians did no wrong. What they should say is that if you have the misfortune of being brought to UAMS by ambulance or if you go there because it is convenient, you do not have the right to refuse treatment.
And after they use four-point restraints and a benzo cocktail to keep you there, expect a bill that will enslave you to paying their six-figure salaries for the rest of your life.
Yet, UAMS Police to me to stop sending the evidence to them and never spoke to the primary victim. They allowed the surveillance videos taken by UAMS employees to be destroyed.
A Higher Law 