Judge Kennedy Replaces Davidson Public Guardian as Woman's Conservator

The Davidson public guardian who courts records show charged $986 to accompany her ward to a Christmas concert at the Schermerhorn was replaced without opposition Wednesday by Probate Judge David Randy Kennedy after a brief hearing.

Kennedy approved a petition to have Myra S. Whitaker of Hendersonville take over as the conservator of her sister, Marlene Spalding. Whitaker replaces Davidson Public Guardian Jeanan Mills Stuart.

The move to replace Stuart followed a report in The Tennessean on the fees charged by Stuart, who was first voted into the post by Metro Council in 2008 and is now serving her second four-year term. Court records show Stuart has regularly charged her full hourly fee for legal services regardless of the service performed. Her current fee is $225 an hour. In Spalding’s case she charged $197.22 an hour to attend the 2011 Christmas performance of Handel’s Messiah. She charged $1,282 to accompany Spalding on a shopping trip in March of last year. In court Wednesday, Everette Parrish, the attorney for Whitaker, said that Spalding’s sister was now willing and able to become conservator. Whitaker was the original conservator but she was replaced by Stuart in 2010 when her husband became ill. He has since recovered and was present at the hearing.

In court papers Parrish noted that Whitaker would serve without charging any fees. Stuart told Kennedy she had no objection to Whitaker’s appointment. Kennedy has said he will not assign any additional cases to Stuart pending a review of the fees she has charged.

Full Article and Source:
Judge Replaces Davidson Public Guardian as Woman's Conservator

See Also:
NASGA:  Ginger Franklin, Tennessee Victim

The Waiting Game: Mentally Ill Patients in New Hampshire Face Spartan Conditions, Long Delays

Concord — Joshua Knight was alone, had been for hours. He curled up on the mattress on the floor, shut his eyes and tried to block out his memories of the day.

 

Knight, 33, had been handcuffed and dragged out of his basement apartment in Chichester that September day last year. His mother, Carla Northrup, had been crying so hard the police told her she had to leave because she was upsetting him even more.

 

She hadn’t been to see him at Concord Hospital, where the police had brought him, not yet. So Knight was alone.

 

He had a mattress, bolted to the floor. A plastic cube served as a hard, backless chair. A television glowed behind a plastic window. At least the staff was kind enough to leave him the remote, he remembered four months after his three-day stay in what is known as “Yellow Pod,” a handful of rooms at the hospital staffed by Riverbend Community Mental Health.

 

For the first two days of his stay at Yellow Pod, Northrup called the hospital to check on her son. Hearing it could be several days more before a bed was available at New Hampshire Hospital, the state psychiatric facility in Concord, she visited to drop off clean clothes and magazines.

The room smelled of urine. Knight was unresponsive, curled up on the mattress so tightly his wrists hurt for weeks after from being tucked into his chest.

 

Doctors would come and go, assuring him they were working on getting him to the state hospital. He didn’t believe them.

 

He couldn’t go outside for three days, until he was transferred to the state facility.

 

“It’s really frightening,” he said. “I was locked up in this little room, this tiny cell. I was treated like somebody who couldn’t take care of themself. Like an animal.”

 

Knight, who suffers from depression and anxiety, was alone, but his experience is not singular.

Full Article & Source:
The Waiting Game: Mentally Ill Patients in New Hampshire Face Spartan Conditions, Long Delays

Judge goes after Sarkozy over alleged elder abuse

PARIS -- Allies of former President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed shock and “incomprehension”yesterday after he was informed on Thursday that he would face a formal investigation into whether he abused the frailty of Liliane Bettencourt, 90, the heiress to the L’Oreal fortune and France’s richest woman, to get funds for his 2007 presidential campaign.

Sarkozy has denied accepting illegal campaign money from Bettencourt, either personally or through his party treasurer at the time, Eric Woerth, as alleged by Bettencourt’s former butler.

Full Article & Source:
Judge goes after Sarkozy over alleged elder abuse

Judge Paul Seeman, Charged With Elder Abuse, Resigns

An Alameda County judge charged with stealing thousands of dollars from his Berkeley neighbor, selling her art, and using her garage to store his Thunderbird has resigned and agreed to never be a judge again.

Kathleen Ewins wrote in an email to NBC Bay Area on Thursday that her client, former Judge Paul Seeman, had resigned. He had a "distinguished career," she wrote and "he felt this was an appropriate action to take at this time for the good of the court."

Seeman resigned in exchange for the Commission on Judicial Performance halting its investigation into him, according to the Oakland Tribune.   The newspaper reported that he had remained on the bench - and continued to receive a paycheck - while his criminal case proceeded, though he had not appeared in court since his arrest.

Seeman was charged in June 2012 with one count of elder theft and 11 counts of perjury, all felonies, as well as enhancements alleging that he stole at least $200,000. This month, the Tribune reported that the District Attorney amended its complaint, charging Seeman with 20 additional crimes, for a total of 32 counts in all.

After a two-year investigation, Berkeley police said Seeman, who has overseen several Occupy Cal protester cases, started off as a neighbor who tried to help Anne Nutting and her frail husband, who were forced to leave their home.

Court records state that Seeman obtained power-of-attorney for the couple in 1999 after stating that he had found $1 million worth of stock certificates and uncashed dividend checks in their house.

Full Article and Source:
East Bay Judge Charged With Elder Abuse Resigns

Zsa Zsa Gabor's Husband Wants to Sell Couple's Home

Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, the court-appointed conservator of his ailing wife, is asking a judge to allow him to sell the couple’s longtime residence for more than $1 million.
The sale is necessary because a $1.15 million loan comes due on the Bel Air Road property where Gabor, who used to own a home in the 500 block of Chino Canyon Drive in Palm Springs, has lived for nearly 40 years, according to court papers filed Monday by Frederic Prinz von Anhalt.

Von Anhalt is hoping for a deferred sale that would allow his wife to remain at the home for at least three years, according to his court papers. Gabor’s right leg was amputated in January 2011 because of gangrene.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Reva Goetz recently ruled that von Anhalt will remain as his 96-year-old wife’s interim caretaker at least until Aug. 21. The judge originally appointed him to the position last July. A hearing on the petition to sell the home is scheduled April 5.

Full Article and Source:
Zsa Zsa Gabor's Husband Von Anhalt Seeks to Sell Couple's Home

Tonight on T.S. Radio: Elder Abuse Thriving in Washington Probate Courts

Beverly Newman, Elder Advocate, Florida, will co-host this show.

Our guest this evening is Bill Sheidler from Washington state. Bill has been the victim of corrupt courts and attorneys who have reached the status of virtually "untouchable".

On his website, which is currently under construction,
http://www.corruptwa.com Bill is beginning the documentation of all the players. Who is untouchable? Who is making money through human trafficking? How is this affecting future cases?

For example: Assume a disabled person is stripped of his property under color of law. The person cannot afford an attorney and goes to court under represented. The case is decided against this disabled person; and may establish a precedent. NOW this case (this precedent) is fodder for going after another persons property.

BY FIRST going after the property of the weak, old, disabled so as to establish the 'common law' it sets the stage for later going after the property of the "somewhat stronger" citizen.

It is the transfer of property from citizens to government by ONE CASE AT A TIME.

THIS is why the issues which you, me and many others have taken a stand against NEEDS TO GET THE ATTENTION of our citizens.

One day it will be their property that is taken and the "common law" will have been well established to allow government to walk in and take what they want.

7:00pm CST! 5:00pm PST ...6:00pm MST ... 7:00pm CST ... 8:00pm EST

LISTEN TO THE SHOW LIVE or listen to the archive later!

UTAH: Guardian of Abused Woman Kept in Closet Sent to Prison for Her Death

Those who loved Christina "Nina" Harms drove 1,500 miles from their homes in Minnesota and South Dakota to stand in front of a judge Friday and tell them about the person they lost.

They wore T-shirts printed with Harms' smiling face. They carried a cardboard display covered in pictures of the woman throughout her life.

"Nina wanted to go to college, she wanted more kids, she was very loving," Marilee Nelson said. "She loved her daughter more than anything. Nina was the most loving person you would ever meet."

Harms was 22 when she died on March 25, 2011, as the result of abuse and neglect in the Kearns home she shared with the woman who was her guardian, Cassandra Marie Shepard, their children and Shepard's mother and stepfather.

"I don't think there will ever be understanding, but today there will be justice," 3rd District Judge Katie Bernards-Goodman said before sentencing Shepard, 29, to prison. Shepard, who pleaded guilty to aggravated abuse of a disabled adult, a first-degree felony, and manslaughter, a second-degree felony, was sentenced to consecutive terms of five years to life and one to 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors say Harms, who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and had the mental capacity of an 8- to 12-year-old, was constantly kept in a small closet where she was forced to eat and go to the bathroom while being bound to a metal bar.

Harms had ligature marks on her ankles consistent with plastic zip ties when officials examined her, severe bruising on her thigh and head, bloodshot eyes, a pepper seed in one of her eyelids, and her hands were completely covered with bandaging material, which would have prevented her from getting the pepper seed out.

Full Article and Source:
Guardian of Abused Woman Kept in Closet Sent to Prison for Her Death

See Also:
Guardian Accused of Causing Death of Disabled Woman

The Forgotten Ones: Compassion for the Elderly

A pessimist, they say, sees a glass of water as being half empty; an optimist sees the same glass as half full. But a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty. ~ G. Donald Gale

*Please volunteer to visit the lonely and forgotten elderly in your community. ♥

Source:
Facebook:  The Forgotten Ones:  Compassion for the Elderly

NJ Healthcare Worker Charged with Using Stolen Credit Card to Buy Online Merchandise

Police have charged a woman, who allegedly stole personal information about residents from her employer, with credit card fraud and theft.

Detective Robert Harms arrested Jennifer De Los Santos, 23, on March 14 at a healthcare facility in Linden where she worked as a patient service supervisor, after he identified her as a suspect in an investigation of credit card fraud, police said.

The investigation began when Roselle Park Police were alerted that a resident’s credit card account information had been compromised after a telephone billing transaction with the healthcare facility.

The theft/fraud suspect, later identified as De Los Santos, allegedly used the patient’s credit card information to purchase merchandise online from Forever 21, Diapers.com and Target. De Los Santos had the companies ship the merchandise to the healthcare facility using a fictitious name, police said.

Full Article and Source:
Healthcare worker charged with using stolen credit card information to buy online merchandise