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.