A man was taken by ambulance to UAMS after an injury. There was nothing a hospital bed could do to help him heal. He wanted to go home.

UAMS said no.

Instead, they decided he would remain in one of the hospital’s most expensive rooms. UAMS says the room costs about $10,000 per night. For uninsured patients, they generously discount it to roughly $4,300 per night. Medicaid ultimately paid about $2,000 per night.

The injured man said, “No. Stop.”

It was too late.

Nurse Nathan Ernst had already injected him with fentanyl.

The patient had a severe reaction to the opioid. Not as severe as his brother’s reaction to a single dose of pharmaceutical methadone, which killed him, but severe nonetheless.

What happened during the next 13 hours may never be known.

The family was never contacted.

The surveillance footage was deleted.

When family members finally located him, they found him naked and restrained to a hospital cot.

Two weeks later, he was finally allowed to leave against medical advice.

UAMS and the doctors and nurses the man accuses of falsely imprisoning and battering him have refused to provide any compensation.

According to the lawsuit, they terrorized him, humiliated him, caused complete hearing loss in one ear, caused hyponatremia—possibly through cerebral salt wasting after dehydration—deprived him of sleep, starved him, and, during one escape attempt, slammed his head into a wall.

Then, after he left the hospital against medical advice and did not die at home, UAMS’s response was essentially: “See? We saved his life.”

The man is now suing.

No attorney has been willing to take on Arkansas’s highest-paid public employees, so he is representing himself.

The doctors, of course, have lawyers.

One of the firms representing them, Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP, sent notice that it intended to subpoena records from the man’s post-hospital employers.

The man moved to quash the subpoenas.

He is not seeking lost wages. The doctors and nurses who had possession of his phone and wallet while he was restrained in the ICU made no effort to locate his family. But now they wanted employment records.

They wanted to know whether he was a cheerful employee.

Whether he complained about PTSD.

Whether he talked about being treated worse than a prisoner of war for two weeks.

And, incidentally, the same people who attempted to generate a medical bill approaching his entire net worth also wanted access to his Social Security number.

After the motion to quash had been fully briefed, the attorneys agreed to remove the Social Security number request from the subpoenas. The motion was then withdrawn.

The first subpoena response arrived today.

The employer’s answer was simple: “0” records.

The man was hired through a temp agency.

Three days of work went into preparing and litigating the motion to quash. Then attorneys at a prominent law firm spent additional time preparing an opposition. The insurance company paid for the attorneys time.

What did anyone learn about what happened inside UAMS in 2024?

Nothing.

No new facts emerged.

No additional accountability was created.

No closer examination of the events occurred.

The only people who unquestionably benefited from all the work, filings, arguments, and billable hours were the lawyers.

They got paid.