 
July 31, 2005
A Father’s Quest
A lawyer sues his former
client— a school for troubled kids— when his own son dies under
questionable circumstances
By Hoda Kotb, Correspondent:
Dateline NBC
DALLAS, TEXAS— Charles
Moody, a hard-charging attorney, made a name for himself by doggedly
defending corporate giants against claims from the little guy.
For years, Moody was the
hired gun for big psychiatric hospitals, defending them against
abuse claims brought by aggrieved patients and sometimes grieving
parents.
For Moody, it was nothing
personal. He was just doing his job—at least that’s what he thought
at the time. That meant battling someone like Judy Chandler, a
mother and homemaker from a small town in Louisiana who suffered a
heart-wrenching experience with her son.
Attorney Charles Moody would be
drawn into a battle
with a former client — but in a way he never expected.
Defending the Brown
schools
Moody squared off in court with Chandler years ago on behalf of
the Brown Schools, a national chain of treatment facilities for kids
with emotional and behavioral issues. She was suing the Brown
schools on behalf of her 18-year-old son, B., who died in their
care.
She hated Charles Moody and
his team from the start. “Just naturally, I just couldn’t stand ‘em,”
says Chandler. “They were the enemy, you know.”
For Moody, it was strictly
business. It was another day in court and another case to win.
Judy Chandler sued the
schools in an effort to hold someone accountable for the death of
her only son: B. was a rambunctious, risk-taking kid who loved
the outdoors and hunting and fishing. When he was 16, B. fell
out of a moving pickup truck while drinking and suffered a head
injury. He survived, but ended up with brain damage.
He had to re-learn
everything, including walking and talking. Frustrated by his
disability, B. developed anger issues. Eventually, experts said
the best place for B. was the Brown Schools’ hospital in
Austin.
He was there only a month
when a doctor at the hospital called Judy with agonizing news.
"He started telling me that
B. had been combative that night. And that they had put him in
a camisole [straight jacket]. Something had happened and he had
started vomiting. And ended up aspirating on the vomit. And that
B. had passed away," recalls Chandler of the day she received
the news. "I kinda felt like I died myself."
Judy hired an attorney, did
some investigating, and learned details of that horrible night. Then
she faced off in court with Charles Moody and told her wrenching
story.
She says B. had acted
out and staff restrained him, she believes as punishment.
"What hurts so bad is to
know what must B. have been thinking when they were holding him
down. And he was just trying to get up," she says. "He was brain
injured. And they weren’t. How could they have done that?"
But Charles Moody, on behalf
of the Brown Schools, argued its counselors were well-trained and
did their jobs and the death was simply a tragic accident.
In her lawsuit, Chandler
claimed B. died because staff “failed to follow proper
procedures” and failed to “properly attend” to her son. But Judy
says the Brown schools — and their hired gun Charles Moody — tried
to shift the blame to B. and indirectly to her.
"That was their defense —
maybe he just wasn’t the great, wonderful child he should have been.
Maybe if he’d have been a better person, none of this would have
happened," says Chandler.
Settling out of court
But no jury would ever hear about B. and how he died, nor
decide if anything was done wrong.
After seven years of legal
wrangling and astronomical legal bills, Chandler was exhausted and
decided to settle out of court.
"I do regret it," she says
now. "But you reach a point where you think it’s enough. I got to
stop. I’ve got go on with my life.'"
The Brown Schools never
admitted fault in B.’s death — in essence, a victory for Moody.
The company, however, did pay Chandler an undisclosed amount of
money.
"Anybody thinks, 'This is
going to make you feel a little better. We made them pay.' But...
it’s nothing. That’s the emptiest feeling I have ever felt in my
life," she says.
And she says even a small
gesture of kindness from Charles Moody felt hollow. After the
settlement, Charles Moody walked up to Judy Chandler and put his
hand on your shoulder and said something to her: He said, “Miss
Chandler, I really did think you were a good mother."
Nothing would bring her son
back, yet Chandler thought she at least had forced some changes to
prevent another death like B.’s. In fact she said Brown schools
executive assured her that things would be different.
But it did happen again to
another teenaged boy much like B. who died nearly the same way
in another Brown Schools facility.
Charles Moody would be drawn
into this battle, too— but in a way he never expected.
By the summer of 2002,
attorney Charles Moody had put the case of Judy Chandler and her son
B.’s death at the Brown schools facility behind him.
Moody's son goes off to a
Brown school
Charles had other things on his mind— for starters, his own son,
C.
Ever since he was a toddler,
C. was a gregarious, outgoing child. He loved to joke around and
he loved sports—especially basketball. At one point, he dreamed of
becoming a pro-ball player.
But throughout his life,
C. had battled hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. Just
as he turned 17 and was about to start his senior year in high
school his behavior changed, like a lot of teenagers. He became
angry and defiant, especially with his mother and step-dad who he
lived with. And he began turning to drugs.
C.’s mother, Lisa Waite,
was concerned her son was becoming addicted. Waite, a teacher, sent
C. to a string of drug and alcohol treatment centers. But those
counselors told her what C. needed most was to learn how to
control his hair-trigger temper. Lisa thought she’d found the ideal
place — a therapeutic wilderness camp called On Track.
Charles knew nothing about
On Track, but he knew plenty about the company that owned and ran
it: the Brown Schools.
Charles said he had been
confident about the Brown Schools in the past, but he was no longer
doing work for them. Nonetheless, he reminded his ex-wife of the
death and urged her to look carefully at On Track.
His ex-wife, Lisa,
researched the program extensively on the Internet and talked to
professionals and heard glowing recommendations. She even quizzed
the staff face to face.
A decision was made. C.
would come to this wilderness camp for kids with behavioral problems
nestled on a 6,000-acre wildlife preserve near Austin, Texas. The
nearly month-long program, billed as learning through nature wasn’t
cheap: $8,500 in cash up front.
Within a couple of days,
C. started writing letters home. It seemed the program was
already working. He was eager to come home and get his life back on
course.
Another struggle, another
death
C. was supposed to be there for 28 days. But suddenly, on the
sixth night, in the middle of the night the phone rang at Lisa’s
house... and then at Charles’ house. It was the director of On
Track.
The Brown Schools said C.
got angry, then violent, and he died in a struggle with counselors.
Charles said he knew there
was a lot more they were not saying. And because he’d represented
the Brown Schools for years, he said he knew what they’d likely say
next — they’d try to blame the victim: “If C. had been a better
kid... if he’d not resisted the counselors... maybe he’d still be
alive.”
After all, that’s what
happened in Judy Chandler’s case. But Charles said he wouldn’t let
that happen this time.
"C. was a good kid," says
Moody. "He had his problems, but he deserved to live. He wanted it.
He went for help. They took it away. He worked hard and a stupid
decision, just like that, he’s gone."
In a terrible sense of deja
vu to Chandler and her son’s death, Charles Moody had become the
grieving parent — and he began to feel what it was like to be on the
other side.
"It’s one thing to be a
lawyer and you feel for your clients and you feel for the other side
even, but you’re not there in it. And now, I’m in it," says Moody.
"And I can understand a little more, I think, of what Judy Chandler
must have felt like."
Chandler, in fact heard the
news about C.’s death in her hometown near Bossier City, La. Her
initial thought? "I thought, 'God I hope that poor man doesn’t think
he’s getting pay back,'" she says. "It's heartbreaking and I
wouldn’t wish it on anybody."
Judy sat down and put pen to
paper in a letter to Charles. In her letter, she expressed how sorry
she was for him and his family and mailed off her letter.
"He was a lawyer. He was
doing his job. He had nothing to do with B. dying," she says.
"He wasn’t there. He’s not to blame and God love him. He lost his
son. And I knew exactly how he felt," says Chandler.
Investigations into
C.'s restraint death
Back in Texas, the state launched an investigation. But Moody
wanted to do something too: So he launched one of his own. "I felt
like that if I didn’t do something that this was just going to be
swept under the rug," he says.
Moody learned a lot about
what happened that night through statements that witnesses at the
scene gave state investigators. The Brown Schools called the death
an accident, but Moody said witnesses, including other children at
the camp, told a different story.
"This was a mugging in my
mind," says Moody.
So what triggered it all? It
turns out, it was something so ordinary. Moody was told that his son
broke the rules by talking in his tent after lights out. The
counselors ordered him to sleep outside. He got angry and yelled
racial slurs.
"They got up in C.’s
face. They got in a confrontation and they started getting in a
verbal sparring match," says Moody of what he found out in his own
investigation.
Remember, C. was at
On-Track precisely to learn how to control his anger. But witnesses
reported counselors did nothing to calm him and actually seemed to
provoke his anger by yelling back at him and grabbing him from
behind.
The counselors said they
were trying to get C. under control by holding him standing up,
but C. fought back. And at 6 feet 2 inches and athletic — C.
was too tall and too strong and they all fell to the ground. C.
was face down struggling to breathe, all in the pitch dark.
Mental health experts say
children should not be restrained unless they pose a danger to
themselves or others. In Texas, a face-down restraint with any
pressure that blocks the airway is illegal.
Charles said witnesses
stated that the three men held C. face down on the ground for
nearly 30 minutes before they radioed the local sheriff’s department
for help. It took a deputy another 20 minutes to reach the remote
campsite at night.
The deputy called for help,
staffers did CPR, but it was too late. C. was dead by the time
EMS arrived at around 9 p.m.
The Travis County Medical
examiner ruled the cause of death as traumatic asphyxiation: The
pressure on his body from being restrained caused him to throw up
and he choked on his own vomit.
The Brown Schools disagreed
and hired its own medical expert who claimed C. died from
“excited delirium syndrome” where his heart stopped because of his
high state of excitement.
State investigators weigh
in
Meanwhile, state investigators issued a damning report which
alleged 28 violations of state regulations in connection with
C.’s death. The state found that the actions of On Track’s three
counselors’ resulted in C.’s death. The report said the three
counselors performed an inappropriate restraint, and belittled C.
and subjected him to “cruel and unusual punishment.” Investigators
further stated that there was not an emergency sufficient to justify
the restraint.
Despite the findings, no
fines or sanctions were brought against the counselors or the
company after C.’s death.
Neither Brown Schools
officials nor the counselors or their attorneys would meet with
Dateline to discuss the case. The company appealed the state’s
findings and made several statements about C.’s death, including
this one:
"The death of a student last
year in the On Track program is a tragedy that profoundly saddens us
and our sympathies remain with his family. At the same time, we know
that our staff acted appropriately in very difficult circumstances.
These are caring men who were devoted to helping the young people in
their charge and they were properly trained to do their job."
To that Moody disagrees.
"These were untrained individuals who, I don’t believe were caring.
If they’d have been caring, they’d have been watching my son’s
breathing."
In fact, Moody eventually
discovered that the three counselors had neither the professional
work experience nor the college education required by the Brown
Schools’ own hiring policy. One worked in a grocery store, another
ran a convenience store and worked on septic tanks. The third
graduated from high school and was hired on by On Track as a night
watchman. It’s unclear, what, if any, training the three got in the
use of restraints.
But now, even after the
damning state report, Charles Moody found his legally-trained mind
was filled with a haunting question: He knew B.H. had died
in 1988 and now in 2002 his own son was dead. Were there other
children who died this way?
The answer to that question
would turn out to be far worse that he’d ever imagined.
16 deaths, no one
criminally accountable
Less than six months had passed since he buried his only son,
Charles Moody was fluctuating between being depressed and being on
the warpath against his former client.
Nothing had happened to the
Brown Schools in the wake of the state’s damning investigation into
his son’s death — no criminal charges, no fines. So, Charles Moody,
along with family and friends, marched to the Capitol of Texas to go
public with his outrage.
He was invited to testify in
favor of a bill imposing criminal penalties in restraint deaths. "I
think my son’s death, like many of these kids' deaths, are entirely
preventable," Moody said in his testimony.
Once there, he met families
of other victims, parents just like himself who’d lost their kids
after being physically restrained.
Like Holly Steele’s
9-year-old son, Randy, who died in a Brown Schools hospital in San
Antonio when he was held face down for throwing a tantrum and
refusing to take a bath. Her son’s death helped change Texas laws to
prohibit face-down holds.
It turns out that C. was
the 16th child to die in a restraint like that in Texas since 1988 —
the fifth at a Brown Schools facility. Within weeks of C.’s
death, the state cancelled its lease with On Track, so the Brown
Schools closed the program and its campsite.
With On Track out of
business, the state took no action against the Brown Schools beyond
its damning report. The Brown Schools appealed, but officials say 26
of the 28 critical findings against it were upheld. The state also
upheld the findings against the counselors, who had denied
wrongdoing.
The local district attorney
presented information to a grand jury, but never called the three
counselors to testify and the grand jury decided there wasn’t enough
evidence to file charges.
Moody says there’s something
wrong with the system when 16 children die in psychiatric and
behavioral facilities and no one is held criminally accountable. He
says he had to fight for some kind of accountability. So he did what
lawyers do — he sued everyone involved in his son's death, including
his former client, the Brown Schools.
"I’ll never win," he says of
his lawsuit. "The only way I could win is if my son came home. There
is no victory in this."
Chandler and Moody meet
again, under different circumstances
Since C.’s death, Charles says he’s often thought of Judy
Chandler and her son’s death. He hadn’t spoken to her since he got
her kind note after C. died. But through "Dateline," the two
former enemies in court came together again... this time as parents
offering comfort to one another.
Judy Chandler: Hello..
Charles Moody: Hi. Judy?
Charles Moody... sorry we had to meet like this again.
Chandler: I wish there was
something I could do for either one of you.
Moody: Just you thinking of
us made us feel really much better.
Charles and his wife, Tina,
thanked Judy for the heartfelt letter she’d sent shortly after C.
died.
Judy, in turn, thanked him
for the comforting words he’d spoken to her after her case was
settled long ago.
Chandler: I just wanted you
to know I knew how you felt. And you were kind to me that day. Just
saying what little you said to me. And I didn’t want you to think
that since you defended them, that I had any, any hard feelings.
Moody: Well, I appreciate
it.
Chandler: You give them
hell.
Moody: Believe me, I’m going
to.
Chandler: Oh, I hope you do.
A time to heal
For more than a year, Moody fought hard against the Brown
Schools. But like Judy Chandler, he concluded the emotional cost of
a drawn-out legal battle was too high — so he, too, settled out of
court with everyone involved.
Like a lot of civil cases,
the exact terms of the settlement were private, but "Dateline"
learned that Charles and his ex-wife got an undisclosed amount of
money. There was no admission of wrongdoing by any of the
defendants.
The Brown Schools declined
comment on the legal action, but Charles said he believes there’s
been a big change in the company’s attitude.
"It appears to me that
there’s a different corporate mindset and it’s a caring corporate
mindset," says Moody.
Moody and his family have
moved from Dallas to a farm in Tennessee, where he’s re-thinking his
career as a lawyer and spending more time with his family — and
taking time to heal.
Just being around the horses
and riding reminds Moody of the cherished time he spent with his son
outdoors and riding carefree into the wind.
The Brown Schools filed for
bankruptcy earlier this year.
Link to transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8729932
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