STUART - A Martin County jury this
morning sided with a local hospital in a
closely watched lawsuit surrounding the
private deportation of a brain-damaged
Guatemalan patient.
Martin Memorial Hospital officials in 2003
sent Luis Alberto Jimenez, an illegal
immigrant, on a chartered flight back to
Guatemala after he had run up more than $1.5
million in medical bills in a case that
garnered national attention.
Attorneys for Jimenez's guardian, Montejo
Gaspar, had asked the jury to find that
Martin Memorial acted unreasonable in
deporting Jimenez and asked for more than $1
million for his care in Guatemala and
punitive damages on top of that.
Jurists rejected their arguments in a verdict
returned early this morning, ending about
nine hours of deliberations that began
Thursday afternoon.
Jurists late Friday had requested to hear for
a second time the videotaped deposition from
former hospital CEO Dick Harmon. In it,
Harmon said he approved Jimenez's transfer
because he thought Gaspar's attorneys had
exhausted their appeals to a judge's ruling
allowing the deportation.
Health care and immigration experts
nationwide have been closely watching the
court action. Lawyers say it may be the first
of its kind and underscores the dilemma
facing hospitals with patients who require
long-term care, are unable to pay and don't
qualify for federal or state aid because of
their immigration status.
Jimenez, now 37, was a Mayan Indian sending
money home to his wife and young sons when in
2000, a drunken driver plowed into a van he
was riding in, leaving him a paraplegic with
the mental capability of a fourth grader.
Because of his brain injury, his cousin
Gaspar was made his legal guardian.
Under federal law, Martin Memorial was
required to care for Jimenez until someone
else would take him. Because of his
immigration status, no one else would. But
hospitals that receive Medicare
reimbursements are required to provide
emergency care to all patients and must
provide an acceptable discharge plan once the
patient is stabilized.
Jimenez spent nearly three years at Martin
Memorial before the hospital, backed by a
letter from the Guatemalan government, got a
Florida judge to OK the transfer to a
facility in that country. Gaspar appealed.
But without telling Jimenez's family - and
the day after Gaspar filed an emergency
request to stop the hospital's plan - Martin
Memorial put Jimenez on a $30,000 charter
flight home early on July 10, 2003.
Weeks later, Jimenez was released from the
Guatemalan hospital and soon wound up in his
aging mother's one-room home in a remote
mountain village.
The case has raised the question of whether a
hospital and a state court should be deciding
whether to deport someone - a power long held
by the federal government.
The lawsuit sought nearly $1 million to cover
the estimated lifetime costs of his care in
Guatemala, as well as damages for the
hospital's alleged "false imprisonment" and
punitive damages to discourage other medical
centers from taking similar action.
Staff writer Andrew Marra and The
Associated Press contributed to this story.