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.
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.)
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| 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.) (
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Full Article & Source:
JUDGE DISMISSES $30M MEDICAL MALPRACTICE SETTLEMENT FOR BLACK MOTHER, CHILD FOR $275,000
