Justice for a lost soul.

At first glance, James Bell was not the ideal plaintiff for a wrongful death suit.

A patient at Whiting Forensic Psychiatric Hospital--part of the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services--James suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He was a young, morbidly obese African-American man with a long history of assault and allegedly sexually predatory behavior. He had been institutionalized for many years, never held a job, and had little education and no earning capacity. James was a smoker and had serious medical conditions, including obstructive sleep apnea, which made it impossible for him to breathe while lying on his back.

James lived at the fringes of society. He was the type of person most of us would rather not think about. Few jurors would ever have met anyone like him, and fewer still would have any idea what his life was like or why his death mattered. Yet, my cocounsel, Jim Nugent, and I could not turn his case down.

Why? Partly because James had a family. His mother, father, sisters, and brothers cared deeply about him. And partly because James, despite all his faults and failings, his sickness and his behavior, was a human being. He had talents: He played several musical instruments and was an accomplished artist. He knew happiness: A photograph of him taken a few months before he died showed him flashing a big grin.

This flawed man was once a young boy, someone's child, for whom his parents had high hopes. He had not always been sick. Looking at him, someone could truly say, There, but for the grace of God, go I.

But mostly, Jim and I could not turn this family away once we saw the abuse James had suffered at the hands of the people entrusted to care for him, and the terrible way he died.

A terrible death

For many months before James's death, the staff at Whiting Hospital failed to treat his mental illness. Nobody ever prescribed Clozaril, the most effective antipsychotic medication for his condition. No one attempted to treat his obesity or to properly diagnose, report, and treat his sleep apnea--even though they knew he suffered from this condition and knew that because of it he could not breathe when lying on his back.

On April 3, 2003, after James assaulted a nurse, Whiting security officers and medical staff shackled him in handcuffs and leg irons and held him down on his back, on the floor. Unable to breathe, James began choking. Despite his obvious respiratory distress and need for emergency medical care, more than 20 staff members refused to intervene. Instead, they accused James of "playing possum," and they all watched as he choked on his own tongue.

Nobody bothered to take his vital signs or check his respiratory or cardiac status. Incredibly, they injected him with the powerful sedative Thorazine even though he was--as they admitted--"flaccid and unresponsive," with fixed and dilated pupils. Finally, James went into cardiorespiratory arrest and died.

We filed suit in Connecticut state court, asserting the violation of James's Fourteenth Amendment rights to reasonably safe conditions, to adequate medical care, to protection from harm, and to be free from undue restraint and excessive force. We also sued under the state's Patients' Bill of Rights, which ensures the right to humane and dignified treatment, to not be medicated without informed consent, to be free from improper restraint, and to receive specialized treatment suited to a patient's disorders.

We also brought a medical malpractice claim and sued on behalf of James's parents for the violation of their Fourteenth Amendment right to maintain a familial relationship with their son. Sadly, so many wrongs were committed against James and his family that we had strong cases for all of these claims.

The case never went to trial. After limited motion practice and document discovery, the case settled for what is, as far as we know, the largest amount ever paid by the state mental health department in a wrongful death case. The damages were driven in large part by the defendants' callous, indefensible behavior and by the state's fear that a jury might award punitive damages.

But what truly made the difference in the outcome were James's humanity and our ability to convey it to the defendants' lawyers and the judge. Showing James as a human being who, for all his flaws, deserved to be treated with respect and dignity was a critical factor in ensuring that he and his family obtained a remedy. Money could not bring James back, but to the extent that compensation provides a measure of justice, justice was done for James Bell.

ANTONIO PONVERT III is a partner at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport, Connecticut.