Georgia Grapples with Dad’s Suit Vs. Son’s Doctor

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After a mentally ill Georgia man was charged with stabbing his mother to death amid a psychotic rage, his father took a step that has so far divided Georgia courts: He filed a medical malpractice lawsuit seeking damages from his son’s psychiatrist.

The question of whether a suspected criminal’s family can profit from wrongdoing was at the center of this case, which landed recently before the Georgia Supreme Court.

Victor Bruscato was assigned to Dr. Derek Johnson O’Brien’s community health center, and expert witnesses testified that anti-psychotic drugs had been helping him manage violent tendencies and sexual impulses.

But that changed in May 2002 after O’Brien ordered that two of his medications be discontinued to rule out the possibility that he was developing a dangerous syndrome. He began having nightmares and claimed the devil was giving him direct orders to do bad deeds, records show.

The behavior turned violent in August 2002, when he smashed his mother Lillian Lynn Bruscato in the head with a battery charger and then stabbed her 72 times. He was charged with the murder, but was found incompetent to stand trial.

His father Vito then sued O’Brien for medical malpractice, claiming that the doctor’s negligence caused his son to become psychotic and kill his mother. O’Brien countered that Bruscato’s family shouldn’t be allowed to sue because of longstanding restrictions barring families involved in potential crimes from profiting from wrongful or illegal conduct.

A judge ruled in the psychiatrist’s favor, but a divided state Court of Appeals reversed. The state’s top court now has the case.

Bruscato attorney William Quinn III said “fundamental fairness” requires the court to allow his client’s case to go forward. If the psychiatrist’s negligence caused Bruscato to become psychotic and kill his mother, he argued, then he should get damages.

O’Brien attorney Milton Satcher countered that Bruscato should not be able to shift the blame for killing his mother to his psychiatrist. Case law, he said, makes it clear that “a person should not be able to sue for recovery of such a wrongful and immoral act.”