Judge dismisses $30mil Medical Malpractice Suit for Mother and Child to $275,000.

DETROIT – A $30 million settlement between Henry Ford Hospital and Lennette Williams, negotiated in 1984 to compensate her and her daughter Mailauni for gross negligence in the child’s 1981 birth, was slashed to $275,000 during a court hearing May 25 in front of Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Muriel Hughes.

Judge Muriel Hughes

Attorneys for Henry Ford Health Systems and Walter Sakowski, Trustee for the questionably legal “Mailauni R. Williams Irrevocable Trust,” agreed to the judgment.  Attorney Lee Stevens of the Bier Howlett law firm sent a notice of the “settlement” to Williams to have her sign, then called her and retracted his request, saying her signature was not needed. (See http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Williamssettlementproposal.pdf.)

Judge Terrance Keith

Mailauni suffers from severe cerebral palsy and brain damage. Her mother is unable to work a steady job due to permanent damage to her back and stomach. In 1981, HFH doctors refused at first to admit Williams, then refused to perform a Caeserean section, instead filling her full of drugs for 36 hours before Mailauni’s birth.

“I have more respect for a common thief who holds you up in the alley with a gun or a knife than I have for these racist maggots that target you in Probate Court,” said Williams, who is Black.

She has battled judges, lawyers, trustees, guardians, and police for decades, often acting pro se in court, fighting for the right to live peacefully with her daughter in their Grosse Pointe Farms home on the settlement proceeds, without having to beg for every penny of their money from various trustees.

Throughout their battles, Williams has received support from the Rosa and Raymond Parks estate, because Rosa Parks considered Mailauni her godchild, and from activists like Arnetta Grable of the Original Coalition Against Police Brutality and Cornell Squires of We the People for the People.

Former Probate Court Chief Judge Milton Mack decided early on That a Black woman could not handle her own money, contradicting an opinion in 1986 from Mailauni's guardian ad litem (GAL) that Williams was perfectly capable of doign so.

The GAL recommended that the matter be left out of probate. Instead, probate judges, trustees, guardians and other court-appointed officials have raped the Williams estate for decades.

(To see the many dozens of times Williams has been subjected to demeaning hearings in on just one of three tracks in Probate Court, click on http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Mailauni-Williams-Trust-Probate-Court-Register.pdf.)

Williams compared her situation with that of the Grosse Pointe South High School students who published a racist video calling for the re-enslavement of Black people, but were punished with a simple suspension from school instead of arrest for a hate crime. (See part of video below.)   (Continue Reading)

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JUDGE DISMISSES $30M MEDICAL MALPRACTICE SETTLEMENT FOR BLACK MOTHER, CHILD FOR $275,000