A Northern California county has agreed to pay an elderly gay man US$600,000 after social workers prevented him from seeing his dying partner in hospital.
Clay Greene, 78, filed a lawsuit against Sonoma County earlier this year, claiming its Public Guardian program discriminated against him because of his sexuality.
He said social workers would not let him see his 88-year-old dying partner Harold Scull, despite signed wills, medical declarations and powers of attorney naming each other as spouses.
Greene said that after Scull's death, social workers forced Greene into a nursing home and sold the couple's property, including art and heirlooms.
Scull was hospitalised in April 2008, after Greene says he fell down the front stairs of the men's home. Sonoma's public guardian's office claimed it kept the men apart because Scull had accused his partner of domestic violence, something disputed by representatives of both men.
The Chronicle reports the public guardian's office went to court to obtain legal control of Scull, whose mental health was deteriorating. It described Greene in court papers as Scull's "roommate", and had him put in a nursing home, "falsely describing him as demented and referring to him in his presence as a 'crazy old man'."
While denying any discrimination, Sonoma County admitted mistakes in selling the couple's property. Under the law, officials can sell property worth US$5,000 or less to cover medical expenses, but the couple's property sale brought in more than US$25,000 at auction.
Scull died in August 2008. Greene's lawyers said the partners never saw one another after they were separated.
The executor of Scull's estate and a longtime friend of the couple told the Chronicle the tragedy "was made worse by the county spreading such terrible lies about Clay".
Greene's nursing home has also agreed to pay US$53,000, in a settlement which Greene's lawyers say prohibits the public guardian's office from moving people against their will.
