Judgment against ‘house of horrors’

 A-18 /The Houston Post/Tuesday, August 13, 1991

Defunct drug facility falsely stated services, jury decides

By Bill Hensel Jr. of THE HOUSTON POST STAFF

A jury has awarded $3.6 million to an 18-year-old Houston youth for the actions of a residential substance abuse clinic that his attorney labeled a ‘house of horrors. 

The jury in state District Judge Lamar McCorkle’s court found that the Westbranch Residential Treatment Center used deceptive trade practices and breached its contract with Erick Wasson and his family. Among the allegations in the lawsuit was that the clinic fraudulently misrepresented its services.

The award is believed to be Texas’s largest in a psychological injury case involving a residential substance abuse treatment facility, said Wasson’s attorney, Bob Bennett.

A total of $3 million of the verdict against the Spring branch are clinic, which went of business in was for punitive damages, attorneys said.

Wasson’s parent sought substance abuse treatment for the youth at Westbranch when he was 15 but the clinic never assigned a trained drug abuse counselor to work with him, Bennett said.

The family had been told a trained drug abuse counselor was part of every patient’’s treatment team, he said.

Clinic officials also knew the counselor assigned to Wasson’s case was a substance abuser yet he was never even screened for drug use, the attorney said.

In addition, the counselor stared an affair with the teen-ager’s mother that led to the breakup of his parents’ marriage, devastating Wasson, Bennett said.The youth’s emotional distress upon learning of the affair was so severe that he became even more dysfunctional than he had been before entering the clinic, he said.“Westbranch Residential Treatment Center was a house of horrors,” Bennett said.

Attorney for Wasson noted that one counselor was arrested for soliciting prostitutes at the center, another was terminated for performing lewd acts in from of a child and one counselor cane to work drunk.

Attorneys for Westbranch argued during the eight-day trial that the conduct of the counselor in question was outside the scope of his employment.

Attorneys for the family handed the decision as a victory for parents who enroll their children in substance abuse clinics.

They said the verdict will send a message that the public will hold substance abuse treatment clinics accountable for professional conduct and treatment claims.

The Wassons spend $55,000 to enroll their son at the substance abuse center, said attorney Randy Reeves, who tried the case with Bennett.