Shaun Reyna was delusional, despondent and desperate to get clean when he slit his neck and arms with a razor at a state-licensed detox center in Riverside County in 2013.
For some two hours, Reyna bled out in his room at A Better Tomorrow’s treatment center in Murrieta. He was alone during this time, and unattended, despite staff’s earlier observation that he was so agitated he should go to a hospital, and despite state rules requiring that detox clients be observed every 30 minutes, according to a wrongful death suit. If A Better Tomorrow had done either of those things, said Reyna’s family, he might still be alive.
American Addiction Centers – which acquired A Better Tomorrow – argued that it did nothing wrong, and that Reyna’s unfortunate decision to end his life was his own and it was not at fault.
Last week, a Riverside County Superior Court jury disagreed, awarding Reyna’s family $7 million in damages.
American Addiction Centers is one of the largest addiction treatment firms in the United States, and has come under national media scrutiny for its business practices. Attorneys did not respond to a request for comment, and the company’s chief executive, Michael Cartwright, did not return telephone messages.
The Reyna tragedy sprang from several problems plaguing the “Wild West” of addiction treatment in California, attorneys said: Potentially life-threatening withdrawal is allowed in non-medical facilities here, even while it is forbidden in other states. In an effort to make money from insurance payments, centers routinely make big promises about levels of care that they are simply not equipped to provide — to get “heads in beds,” as it is known in the industry — and state inspectors can’t keep up with it all.
“It’s an industry that’s notoriously unregulated and unchecked,” said Jeremiah Lowe, one of the Reyna family’s attorneys. “This is what happens you have a lot of greed and a lot of profits coming into this marketplace. You’re dealing with people who are vulnerable, sick, who have hit rock bottom and need help, and (rehab centers) are making a lot of money off of that.
“We’re hoping this ($7 million award) shines a bright light on the whole industry.”
Legally blind, with a history of physical and mental illnesses complicated by his use of alcohol and benzodiazepines, Reyna, from Atwater, had stopped the pills and drinking cold turkey. He was, he told a phone rep from A Better Tomorrow, “barely hanging on by the edge of my nails.”
In a tape of the 2013 conversation, Reyna tells the sales rep: “I’m depressed. I’m paranoid. I don’t know. I just feel like people are watching me, and …I feel like I can’t hold on any longer.”
Reps from the company assured him they had everything he needed to be safe and start recovering. They also told him he could come in for help as soon as the financial details were worked out, and they urged him to have his wife call back with the necessary information.
But when Reyna arrived for treatment, he was not given a blood test to identify whatever drugs were in his system. And as the tremors began and he shook and hallucinated — symptoms that aren’t unusual for people weaning their bodies off the substances Reyna said he took — some staff at A Better Tomorrow advised taking Reyna to a hospital. But, according to court papers, that advice was voted down by supervisors.
In his room at the center, the morning after he arrived, Reyna pulled the razor from his luggage, his attorney said.
The Reyna lawsuit says at least five addicts with serious medical or psychiatric issues were admitted to A Better Tomorrow facilities and died shortly afterward. It didn’t matter how sick the people were or how ill-equipped the center was to care for them – if they could pay, the non-medical facility took them in anyway, said Patrick Stormes-Swan, another attorney for the Reyna family.
The jury found the treatment center liable for negligence in Reyna’s death, and that all fault in the death was the responsibility of the facility.
The Southern California News Group spent a year probing the addiction treatment industry in California and found that as opioid addiction has soared, unscrupulous rehab operators have rushed in to take advantage of mandatory mental health treatment coverage required by the Affordable Care Act. For rehab centers, broke and homeless heroin addicts can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each in the form of insurance payments. Many addicts are bought, sold and exploited in an underworld rife with kickbacks, drug use and fraud that can end in death.
“There needs to be legislation and regulation over these type of non-medical facilities,” said Stormes-Swan. “They’re preying on vulnerable people and the law just hasn’t caught up.”