Dare Matthews says her burning desire to read the latest on the downfall of the NBA team’s racist former owner Donald Sterling on her cellphone was
used by doctors to justify her being held six days for paranoid thoughts and a behavioral disorder.
“Doctors decided she thought the Clippers were somehow controlling her thoughts and that her Twitter was part of it," said Matthews’ attorney Rose Weber.

“They took every innocent thing and made it into a crazy symptom.”
Matthews, 24, who was attending Fashion Institute of Technology at the time of the incident, seeks $10 million in damages.
The bizarre “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” suit against the city began on April 30 of last year when two employees who work in the lobby of the swank Olivia apartment building on W. 33rd St. called 911 on Matthews.
Her suit attributes the call to a simmering feud with staff, but an attorney for the Olivia said otherwise.
“She was acting bizarre,” said Deborah del Sordo, who represents the building, which is also named as a defendant in the suit.
EMTs and police arrived, deemed Matthews an emotionally disturbed person and took her to Bellevue.
At the hospital, her fandom was used against her as she pleaded with doctors in the psychiatric ward to let her check her phone for alerts on the Sterling saga, she charges in an amended complaint filed in Manhattan Federal Court last week.
Matthews’ Twitter had recently been hacked — a coincidence that doctors didn’t believe, her suit alleges.
Dr. Serena Yuan Volpp wrote that Matthews suffered from “ideas of reference or influence” and “paranoid ideation,” according to documents.
ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Reading about Donald Sterling's downfall as owner of the Los Angeles Clippers led Dare Matthews to Bellevue, she says.
“She was preoccupied with the L.A. Clippers coach (sic) and racist statements that he had made, and felt that this was somehow connected to her changes that she noticed in her telephone, and thought that this was related to her phone having been hacked,” Volpp wrote, according to court papers.
The suit alleges that doctors recklessly mixed up Matthews’ hacked Twitter account and obsession with the big sports story of the moment.
“Volpp deliberately combined and distorted these facts in order to make it appear that plaintiff was paranoid and that she believed that her phone was controlling her thoughts,” the suit reads.
That wasn’t the only seemingly innocuous thing doctors used to justify Matthews’ stay at Bellevue, the court papers charge.
Dr. Katherine Maloy wrote that Matthews was “internally stimulated and smiling inappropriately’ when in fact the television was on and plaintiff was watching it and was laughing at ‘The Jerry Springer show,’” the suit reads.
Matthews was medicated during her stay at Bellevue, papers charge.
A Bellevue spokeswoman said she could not comment due to patient privacy.
A city Law Department spokesman said the suit will be reviewed.

Del Sordo said the building can’t be held liable for the ordeal because staff simply did what they’re supposed to do — call the cops if something seems wrong.
Weber insisted her client was simply the victim of doctors seeking evidence of her instability.
“It was confirmation bias. As soon as you decide someone’s crazy, everything they say is crazy to you,” Weber said.
No comments:
Post a Comment