A singer who joined the storied Motown group the Four Tops in 2018 sued a Michigan hospital on Monday, accusing its employees of inserting him in restraints and ordering a psychological analysis as a result of they didn’t imagine he was a part of the band.
The singer, Alexander Morris, who’s Black, filed a lawsuit accusing Ascension Macomb-Oakland Hospital of racial discrimination and two workers of negligence for an incident in April 2023, when he was taken there by ambulance with chest ache and issue respiratory.
When Mr. Morris, 53, advised hospital employees that he was a member of the Four Tops — which helped outline the Motown Sound within the Nineteen Sixties with hits equivalent to “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” and “Reach Out I’ll Be There” — the employees “wrongfully assumed he was mentally in poor health” and a safety guard was instructed to place him in restraints, the lawsuit alleges.
When Mr. Morris supplied to indicate his identification card, the lawsuit stated, the safety guard, who’s white, advised him to “sit his Black ass down.”
“None of the nursing employees intervened to cease the racial discrimination and mistreatment,” stated the lawsuit, which accused the employees of taking Mr. Morris, who had a historical past of coronary heart issues, off oxygen whereas they pursued a psychiatric analysis.
The nonprofit well being system that oversees the hospital, Ascension, launched an announcement wherein it declined to touch upon the pending litigation however stated, “We don’t condone racial discrimination of any type.”
The Four Tops has seen a rotation of substitute singers since its heyday. Its solely surviving authentic member, Abdul Fakir, invited Mr. Morris to affix the group in 2018 and he has been performing with them since 2019. At the time of Mr. Morris’s hospital go to final 12 months, the lawsuit stated, the Four Tops had been touring with one other Motown jewel, the Temptations, and the group had not too long ago carried out at a Grammys charity occasion honoring Berry Gordy, Motown’s founder.
Seeking to persuade the hospital that he was not “delusional,” Mr. Morris’s lawsuit stated, he confirmed a nurse a video of him performing on the Grammys occasion. Then the employees canceled the psychiatric analysis, eliminated the restraints — which the go well with stated had been in place for about 90 minutes — and positioned him again on oxygen.
The lawsuit, which was filed within the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, stated that after the ordeal, Mr. Morris was supplied a $25 present card to a grocery store, which he stated he refused to just accept.
“The hospital denied my id and my fundamental human dignity after which supplied me a present card,” Mr. Morris stated in an announcement offered by his legal professionals.
