Beauty Buyer Beware VIIII: Dr. Ben Brown

 Did Hillary Brown die from an overdose of Lidocaine poisoning?

Her husband, embattled plastic surgeon Ben Brown who was administering the local anesthetic when she went into cardiac arrest in his office, says she didn’t. 

However, Medical Examiner, Dr. Deanna Oleske found that the 33-year-old mother of three did die from complications of lidocaine toxicity after she ruled out every possible cause of death. 

It’s a point of contention for Dr. Brown who tried to block Oleske from being able to testify about her findings at his manslaughter trial, but the judge ruled against him and the ME will testify when the time comes.

According to official investigative documents, the medical examiner isn’t the only one who suspected lidocaine was to blame for the young woman’s death – the victim did too.  

Hillary Brown did not explicitly use the words "you gave me too much lidocaine." 

However, she did explicitly tell her husband that she was experiencing severe adverse symptoms—which she recognized as a sign that she was overdosing.

The details regarding her exact statements during the November 2023 procedures are documented in the Florida Department of Health’s investigation and the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office probable cause affidavit:

 • Her Explicit Statements: During the procedures, after Dr. Brown injected her face and arms, Hillary stated that her "vision was blurry" and that she was "seeing orange."

 • Her Realization: The probable cause affidavit notes that Hillary stated her face felt really "puffy". The document states she communicated that she thought those symptoms were a sign she was overdosing, right before she began convulsing.

 • The Medical Response: Despite alerting him to these textbook symptoms of lidocaine toxicity, the report indicates Dr. Brown "stayed the course," continuing to inject local anesthetics (lidocaine and xylocaine) and operated on her until she suffered a grand mal seizure and went into cardiac arrest.

Based on these investigative findings and his delay in calling in 911 and beginning CPR on his unconscious wife, Brown was subsequently arrested and charged with second-degree felony homicide (manslaughter by culpable negligence).

Join us as we discuss his latest hearing in Santa Rosa County that cleared the way for his trial.

This will be the 9th Episode of the Playlist of Beauty Buyer Beware: Dr. Ben Brown.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Czarzar Law. I'm investigative journalist Molly Barrows. For years, I've covered the stories that made headlines in Northwest Florida and all along the Gulf Coast. Murder. Missing persons. And mysteries of all kinds. These cases are far from over for many victims. Because the full story has yet to surface. Join me for Gulf Coast Confidential, where I dive into the saltier side of the south and expose the lies, greed, and corruption that often weigh down the truth. It's time to turn the tide and get a shot at justice. Hey y'all, and welcome to the Gulf Coast Confidential Podcast. I'm Molly. Hi, I'm Pam. And if you haven't already, please like and subscribe. And remember, we'd always love to hear from you. Leave a comment or a suggestion about a case. There's always something brewing and breaking right up here in beautiful Northwest Florida and well beyond the Gulf Coast. We know we're not the only ones with uh a market on what the fee is. So we want to hear from you as well and the kind of crazy stories that are happening in your neck of the woods and what you would like to see discussed. So today we're gonna dive right in. This is our ninth episode of the Beauty Buyer Beware series on Dr. Ben Brown. You may remember if you haven't followed, that this is the embattled plastic surgeon who is charged with manslaughter and the death of his wife Hilary Brown, who died of suspected lidocaine toxicity after her husband performed several procedures on her in his office in Gulf Breeze, Florida in 2023. Well, just a few days ago, Brown had a hearing on his Dalbert motion, which was to exclude the testimony of our chief medical examiner, Dr. Deanna Oleski, on her findings that his wife Hillary died from complications due to lidocaine toxicity. Brown's defense team was arguing that Olesky isn't qualified to make that determination because she's not a toxicologist and they questioned her methodology. Well, the judge wasn't having it. Judge Clifton Drake ruled that Olesky could testify at his upcoming trial for many reasons, including that she is an expert in her field, that Florida law does not require medical examiners to be toxicologists, because they take in all the circumstances surrounding a death. They put it into context. And she consulted with other experts in the field of toxicology on her findings. So Brown's trial was scheduled for August. It's now been pushed back to October. And while both the state of Florida and Ben's defense team seek out additional experts, they want to find other people that are going to talk about and review these autopsy findings. That's why they're getting more time, basically before this trial. So we're going to go ahead and, like I said, dive right in because there's a lot to cover in this case. And I sat through that Daubert motion. I had to leave about midway through Dr. Borger, Christopher Borger. And he is not a medical doctor, but this is the hired gun that the Brown's defense team hired to basically critique her, if you will, and undermine and demean, and apparently, in my opinion, threaten her because he's also the same person that filed that letter, sent it to her certified mail, and copied the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Medical Examiners Association that basically oversees, regulates, and you know, uh provides discipline when needed, if needed, to medical examiners. So he copied, basically sent a letter saying, You don't know what you're talking about. You're not an expert. Out of the goodness of my heart, I'm sending you this letter to tell you how much you messed up. I'm not doing it because Ben Brown paid me. Mind you, this was just a month after the administrative hearing. This was last October, he sent the letter. The month before that, in September, he had appeared and testified at the administrative hearing. That was the Florida Department of Health basically taking Ben to task for what they felt like were administrative failures, not proper rep record keeping, not immediately calling 911 when his wife went into cardiac arrest while he was performing procedures on her. He ended up getting his license suspended for a year. But the judge in that, as we've talked about numerous times here on this program, Yolon De Green had determined, even though it wasn't being asked of her, that she found that, you know, Borgert's claims that she didn't die of lidocaine toxicity or complications from it were more quote unquote credible than Oleski's when Olesky wasn't even on trial. She wasn't asked to be there, she was not there, she never heard from Dr. Olesky. She just up and decided in between giving him tissues when he was crying about her that, you know, she that that Borgert's testimony was more credible. I all of that to me essentially kind of poisoned the well, but it didn't impact the hearing that we saw last week.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Right, right. It's just because it didn't, because it could have, because I did worry about that. Those two are the same. Yolanda Green, the judge, administrative judge, and Borgert have absolutely no business opining about anything. We're gonna have a trial. Hillary is not here. She should be here. There was no reason for her to die on Ben's table. So I start with this with that administrative hearing. What judge gets up and hands little tissues to someone that's weepy or whatever? And then you're saying, I like him better over there, and I hadn't even talked to her. And I I just have a lot of self-righteous indignation right off the bat with how dare you take our medical examiner to task when you're just an admin judge over here? You ain't even supposed to be talking about any of this stuff, and you are a professor, you're not even a medical doctor, and you're you're skilled in vet stuff, it seems like, and just opining. And I'll tell you one thing, you ain't gonna write me no damn letter outside of school and send it to me and say I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart. Well, good, then Ben Brown shouldn't have to pay you at all. And how dare you say that to me, and how dare you uh look at my work and and how dare you say, well, you just sign it, I've corrected it. You can kiss my ass all day long because that ain't gonna happen.

SPEAKER_05 5:55

Well, and he is a hired gun, we've mentioned numerous times. He's hired by big corporations like Barron Monsanto to put a spin on how their weed killer doesn't cause cancer. You know, and so now Ben Brown and his attorney Mark O'Mara basically hired him to be their expert toxicologist. He has a private pharmacology practice where he does these kinds of things regularly. It just was interesting to me from a journalistic standpoint. I have covered a lot of cases here in this neck of the woods all across Northwest Florida, from Okaloosa County to our east, Santa Rosa County is the next county over that to the west, and then here in Escambia County. And there was, to me, in my opinion, no way the court could have ever ruled against her being an expert in this, because as they talked about at the Dobert motion hearing, she's conducted over 2,000 autopsies. She is an expert in her field. Florida law does not require her to be a toxicologist. She does regularly consult with toxicologists, like they all do in these medical examiner offices, because they're basically looking as forensic pathologists at the full picture. They're taking in what other what other things were happening at the time. And in this case, Hillary Brown was complaining of seeing orange. She was twitching. He continued to administer undiluted lidocaine, according to witness statements, and according to investigators who base their findings on those witness statements. And that's when she started to seize, have grandma seizures. An expert witness also testified at that administrative hearing that her seizures that she had in that chair when her heart stopped were grandma seizures. All of that, according to textbook findings, is lidocaine toxicity. Ben Brown himself has also came up in this Daubert hearing. The first place that they took her when she coded, essentially, and they brought her back, um, even though they didn't immediately call 911, you know, between 10 and 20 minutes before they ever called 911, um, before they really started performing CPR in earnest. He kept thinking, I guess that he was going to bring her back, was according to what some of the witnesses testified. But when he first got into the ambulance, and according to some of the witnesses, he asked for them to take her first to a freestanding clinic in Navarre. Now, for those folks who aren't familiar with Northwest Florida, where his office was is in Gulf Breeze. That's about I would say 30 to 45 minutes away from Pensacola, where our major hospitals are. We're talking about Baptist Hospital, Sacred Heart Hospitals, where they ended up taking her. And there's also West Florida. So when he's when I mentioned Navarre, Navarre, y'all, is 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes from where his office is in Gulf Breeze, the other direction. It is in Santa Rosa County, but it is to the east. So basically, they take her there first. This freestanding clinic does not have, it's not set up for what she needed. And I can't help but think that a man who is as genius as Dr. Ben Brown seems to think that he is, didn't know that. So it's odd to me, if that is true, what witnesses said, that he requested for those paramedics to take her to that freestanding clinic. Why would you do that? Because timing has come up a lot with how quickly the body processes lidocaine. That's what Borgert was relying on a lot and hanging his hat. I am not an expert. Let me just say that, you know, as I've said many times, not in the legal field, certainly not in medicine. All I can base it on is what I hear, what I've been following, and what I've researched. And again, going back to that freestanding clinic, what he first goes 20 to 30 minutes down the road, they get there. Oh gosh, we can't help her. But my point this time bringing it up is because the doctor that was there at the time, this came out in the Daubert motion hearing, Ben Brown, he told the medical examiner, hey, Ben Brown said that it could be lidocaine toxicity. That could be why she's what she's suffering from. And that freestanding ER clinic called poison control to start getting their thoughts on how it should be handled. So they said we don't have the equipment, the resources here to treat her like she needs to be treated. You're gonna have to go back to Pensacola. So now you're talking an hour essentially back to Pensacola. And on the way, also in another part of Gulf Breeze, you have another hospital. You have Baptist Hospital in Gulf Breeze. They go right past that because apparently, according to witnesses and witness statements, he requested to go to Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola. And that's where she ended up staying. That's where they decided to pull the plug on life support when she died about a week later for lack of oxygen to her brain over a prolonged period of time. So all of that to say this, there was so much dissection of lidocaine toxicity. And this Borgert was just waxing poetic about what a great, you know, how knowledgeable he was about this and how compared to Deanna, she just didn't know better. And it was just disappointing and concerning to him that she didn't include X, Y, and Z in her findings. And essentially the judge came back and he said, Well, she is an expert in her field. She does know what she's doing. That isn't necessarily what she needs to have. She used a rule out method, and we're gonna go through these step by step. But I did think that that was interesting. I that that that it even got to this point, that there was even a hearing on the Stobert motion. This is our chief medical examiner. This is what criminal defendants do. They try to throw out the main evidence against them. Of course, his attorney, Mark O'Mara, is going to throw that up. This is the same man that played a role in um the in in the finding of Trayvon Martin when George Zimmerin was accused of manslaughter in the case of shooting and killing an unarmed teenager, and he was found not guilty. So I think a lot of this is just the song and dance and the jazz hands that they do to try to muddy up the waters and confuse people. But what is infuriating to me is just the doctors that wanted to email me privately and not put their name on it and be like, well, I'm concerned that she's not a toxicologist. And I'm like, or are you concerned because maybe you're breaking some rules, you're bending some rules. Right. And it's and it's easier to go ahead and blame this doctor who's holding him accountable for her concerns over Hillary's cause of death, um, as opposed to, you know, maybe saying, Oh gosh, maybe we should take a look at Dr. Ben Brown instead of saying, you know, as opposed to criticizing the medical examiner who was just doing her job. So there was no way they were gonna find against her, I don't think. But you weren't sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

No, I don't think so either, because you would you would you would have to be crazy.

SPEAKER_05 12:12

You'd have to redo all the 2,000 cases she's done already.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah. Well, also the doctors that want to slide in there or whomever they are, want to sneak in and stuff. I don't, I don't care what you have to say if you're not honorable enough to go, my name is Pamela Gail Hill, and this is what I'm saying. Exactly. And I don't care what you think, here's what I think about you, because I know who you are. Right. I think you do the stuff and you sent people to Ben Brown, and you're afraid because you keep coming up in everything we read. And here's the thing, too. Of course, Dr. Borgart wants to half-ass tell the story and stuff. Let's start at the beginning there, where we're in a nasty, filthy clinic. Everybody said it was nasty and filthy, still being built out, and he shouldn't have been able to perform any procedures in there. But the Department of Health does kind of lackadaisical. He he this is what he does. He gets away to live another day, he fights to live another day. And in this clinic in there, even one of the employees there, Deborah, that was with the she had written him a letter that said, I am an expert at this. I mean, good, she knows she is. That's her job. And I am prepared to help y'all with this. And here's some things I see that we need to fix. However, and went on and on and on and basically was met with like a fist of get out of here, you know.

SPEAKER_05 13:32

And she Well, she was let go.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Right. Well, she told him, she said, if you do not have any interest in fixing this horrible stuff, let this serve as my resignation. Yes. You know, yeah. So that's an honorable lady. Yeah. Now he had people do that. Now here we are. Let's go back to Hillary's procedures, four or five of them happening at one time, with him in there, with young girls in there. All right, he runs out. You never should run out of the numbing agent. I mean, you're you say you're the best doctor. He says he's the Michelangelo of plastic surgery. Yes. He said it all over YouTube, and it just seems like he's Mr. Magoo because they ran out of the prepared numbing agent.

SPEAKER_05 14:11

Yeah, the Tumescent solution that Hillary Brown herself mixed because he had this engineering major working as an assistant in his office, basically being office manager and convincing patients that she also was licensed as a medical professional to use a laser, to do stitches, to help with wound care. And there was a lot of that. If you followed any of these episodes, you know a lot of patients came forward after Hillary's death that said, Well, we are we are just devastated by her death, but some of us aren't surprised because of what we've experienced. And to your point, the employees that stepped forward, Deborah Guy. Right. But yeah, that but Hillary had mixed her own tumescent solution, taken a handful of pills. He had performed on her before. And in fact, she had nearly lost her life that previous Easter. At least that was what witnesses said that she had become unconscious while he was performing procedures on her, but he managed to bring her back. So I don't know how close she came to potentially losing her life, but it was another yet incident where he she was basically in his care and then and went unconscious, but he managed to bring her back. So she was getting several procedures done again. She mixed her own tumescent solution, which is like you said, anesthesia, took some pills. Um, and then in the middle of these procedures, he ran out. And that's when he tells the two women, the two young women, the one was a vet tech and one was recently out of school, neither was a nurse. Um, hey, get me some more xylocaine slash lidocaine. And this is another point that they brought up in the Doberts uh hearing, because they were saying, Mark O'Mara was saying, well, to to Dr. Oleski, are you sure that was undiluted lidocaine? Where did you get the uh, you know, the information that was undiluted lidocaine? And she's like, Well, that came from the investigators who took it from witness statements. And then you and I have been talking a little bit about that as well. He tells them, grab a vial and use pliers to get it on.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, grab two vials. And this is just a little vial right here of uh like B12. But just look at how a vial is. You see right there, it has the metal collar around it. And I don't know if it was a pliers like this or the several over there by you, but like pick up that little vial right there. Okay, now here you are. She's seizing, she's in duress, and you're doing this right here, and xylocaine does come in 1% and 2%, and lidocaine, xylocane's the name brand. And you got girls doing this. This was also cruel. And he's got a bowl. You know, nothing's sterile after it sits out on the drape. We got we got physicians down here in Florida uh throwing livers out on the drape and telling people their spleens. We got this bunch right here using a bowl and just taking a syringe. Here we go, here's a little syringe. We just, I don't have time to pull it out of the vial there. I'm just gonna go and slosh it around and pull it out and then put it in her face. I know. Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_05 16:55

In fact, it was that ER doctor, according to Dr. Olesky, who said Dr. Brown told him, hey, the reason she may be unresponsive is possibly due to lidocaine toxicity. Take a listen to what she had to say at that hearing.

SPEAKER_04 17:08

I do know that upon her arrival to the freestanding clinic, that lidocaine toxicity was brought up as a possibility for an explanation as to why she was unresponsive by Dr. Brown to Dr. Benjamin Myers.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Do you think that was an appropriate comment to make by Dr. Brown?

SPEAKER_04 17:26

Do I think that was appropriate? Uh he was the physician that was there. He made the diagnosis correctly. And yes, it's an appropriate handoff to another physician. Well, I don't think that he was wrong. I think he was entirely correct with that diagnosis. Again, I believe that Dr. Brown's clinical diagnosis of lidocaine toxicity was correct.

SPEAKER_05 17:49

So Omar, when he was questioning Deanna about that lidocaine, he was really trying to raise, in my opinion, this question of, well, was it really undiluted? Where did you get this information that it was undiluted? And that's when she said, Well, it came from the investigators who got it from witness statements, the two women essentially that were right there in the room who were being told by him to get this uh undiluted lidocaine and to stick it in a bowl. Right. And like you said, open it up with pliers. So this is what Deanna Olesky had to say to his attorney, Mark O'Mara, when he was asking her about that undiluted lidocaine.

SPEAKER_04 18:23

I I believe that while uh he was uh injecting the solution that he drew up from the bowl. Again, I don't know if it was 1% or 2% lidocaine, um that while this was being injected into her face or her perioral region, um, that she said that she saw orange uh and then suffered a seizure. Again, these are a constellation of findings that uh support the clinical diagnosis of lidocaine toxicity. These are the manifestations of lidocaine toxicity.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

She knows that because that's how it comes in the vials, and that's what he told them to do was take the collar, the metal collar, off of the vials and with all the glass and stuff that could get in there, because he did not have time to pull it up in a syringe. So also that tells us it's not diluted. Also, he just who knows how much he got in there. I'm sure he put two too much because it's sloshing around. He is operating this operating room like a mad scientist, one of these people that has that uh medical narcissism, basically like my genius. I just told you people I'm Michelangelo, and I've done 340 videos on YouTube telling y'all how wonderful I am. And I made sure that I got uh to be best of the bay, because I made sure to throw get all the emails and phone calls in there to make sure I got that, you know, little bogus thing going on here.

SPEAKER_05 19:56

Well, it's a sales pitch. Yeah, exactly. Basically you can uh either pay or hire or cajole enough people to give a good review, and it's a popularity contest. It's like homecoming queen, if you will. So basically you can pay to get your crown.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Right, right. Homecoming queen for someone that's not doing it honorably. I mean, if you made it, you made it. There are a lot of businesses that make it on the legitimate thing. Absolutely. They have people that sit around just like they do on American Idol or whatever it is. People just call, call, call, call, call. After a while, it loses its appeal and it's not right. It's it's a way, like you said, just to shove it there. But we got pliers, we got bowls, we got vials of medicine, we got comescent solution that we ran out of. He she took a handful of pills. None of this is her fault.

SPEAKER_05 20:42

Right. And the witnesses said that he stated, what did she take? What did she take when she started to seize and when she was going unconscious, and he did not want them to call 911, despite them repeatedly asking, can we call 911? Can we call 911? He did not immediately want them to start CPR. Eventually they did start CPR, eventually they did call 911, but it was at least 10 to 15 minutes uh before they actually did call for help. But to your point, he also couldn't find uh stethoscope, it didn't have the crash cart, didn't have oxygen on hand. That's why he lost his license for a year, why it was suspended, because uh Yolanda Green said that he should have called 911. That is against basic standard medical care. Um but what's surprising to me is you got pliers on hand to pop open a lidocaine, you got buckets, yeah. According to Deborah Guy, he asked her, he and Hillary asked her to clean medical tools in a bucket of distilled water. That's why this bucket's here. Right. Um but he's so but but something as simple as the stethoscope and oxygen wasn't there. But by golly, you got pliers to pop open the undiluted lidocaine. Well, and speaking of, again, the undiluted lidocaine, Mark O'Mara was making the point that you didn't get this information from Ben Brown's medical notes, Dr. Olesky. Where did you get this information from? And like I said earlier, she attributed it to the investigators who had talked to the witnesses. Well, the reason it wasn't in Ben Brown's medical notes is one, he made those. Right. Who is going to put those as the defendant? Hey, y'all, I just shot her up with some undiluted lidocaine when I ran out of the rest. Right. So the judge did make a point of saying that in his ruling at the end, and we're going to play that here in a minute, just uh so you can hear what his reasoning was and why he came to the conclusion that he did. But he did point out to the fact that, you know, this is the man on trial for her death. Right. He is the one who provided these documents. That is the information that Borgert relied upon when he did his own math determining that Hillary Brown did not die of lidocaine toxicity. He was like, no, she didn't die of lidocaine toxicity, and here's all why, and my magic math and whatever else, and my, you know, superior knowledge of pharmacology and toxicology than our expert medical examiner. So he decides that that's not what killed her based on Ben Brown's numbers. Well, how do we know that they're even accurate? And that's essentially the point that the judge raised. And another point, he never provided those documents to Dr. Deanna Olesky. She had to ask and ask and ask, and eventually had to subpoena him for those records. Right, right. He didn't provide them. This is not a man who's cooperating with investigation. Although he is certainly pleaded not guilty. He's cooperated, of course, with his defense team to defend himself. And but he is not one that immediately stood up and said, gosh, you know, maybe I messed up here.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Well, let's talk about anybody that has anything to do with medicine. I'm a pharmacist. We've said that a million times, been one for 40 years, and I'm not gonna get in the weeds about this lidocaine and this, that, and the other. He used vials of lidocaine in a bowl, slopped it and sloshed it and pulled it up in a syringe. He's not even keeping notes in real time. He had time to go back and doctor the notes. We do our notes in real time if you have if you have any honor and integrity, and you give the exact thing to save the person's life. This person, I got six cell phones right here. I'm never asking anybody if I can call 911. And I don't know any nurse that would let you do that. Any doctor with sense, any pharmacist, any person, you know, you don't learn one thing off this show is that you don't have to ask anybody to call 911. You just do it. And you can wave them off later. That's what I'm famous for saying because people are like, well, whatever. We wouldn't be it upsets me so much. We wouldn't be going through this. Dixie and Marty would have their daughter if he would have just done what's honorable. He taught these young girls and he wants to act like he's a mentor in medicine. And like I said, I'm gonna keep going back to this thing about the medical narcissism where you blame the person's body and everybody else in the world, but you cannot even be held to the standard to know what she took, and you can't find your own stethoscope. Uh interns, uh, people that are pretending to be doctors got a stethoscope on, oximeter, no crash cart, no oxygen, not any sterile solutions to clean stuff. This was a damn mess. And Borgert's gonna come, and plus, I know he didn't tell us I I gave like, even if he's talking in milliliters, I gave 120 milliliters in there on that, and then I just poured it up and I just shot it in her face and your eye and everything. Borgert and them, Borgert is disingenuous, and I will say that over and over and over again. This man's not gonna come in here, and you a professor or something or teacher, and you're gonna come in here and act like you know better than our medical examiner, and Ben Brown, the one that told you're not even telling this part of the story, so you don't get to tell half a story. We know what he did. He said what he did. The people in there said what he did. Hillary told him, I am blurry vision, I am seeing orange, I think you have overdosed.

SPEAKER_05 25:40

Her feet were twitching.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Exactly. So that is all classic textbook, and he has doubled down on it, and now he's got Mark O'Mara who all the grift is going on. That's how I feel about this whole thing here. Got uh Burgert and this, that, and the other. People half-assed, not even telling the truth, and coming in there. This is rich to come from this bunch of people coming in here attacking our medical examiner who is studied and honorable. I just take great exception to it. And you know that because I never stopped bitching about it.

SPEAKER_05 26:09

Yeah, no, I I certainly do. And and they did say that in the hearing that there's so many nerves and vessels around the eye, it's it's vessel rich, if you will. Right. And that's when she started seizing, is when he was putting that undiluted, allegedly undiluted lidocaine in and around her eyes. But going back to how rich it is, I again was surprised that there was even a hearing on the sobert motion. As long as I've been covering cases in in in Northwest Florida, like I started to say earlier, the job of a judge most of the time is to support the criminal justice staff. And if your chief medical examiner isn't somebody to protect, then why are you there? You know, if there had been some egregious violation, but uh what he was accusing her of was simply based on his opinion. And I felt like they gave him more weight and credibility than really that all of that deserved. Right. Why even hold a hearing? The judge could have essentially said, no, she's qualified. I've seen her credentials, I've seen yours. This is something that needs to be brought up at trial. Let the jury decide what they want to believe. Exactly. And and and Drake did say that in his hearing. He said, This is uh something that the jury needs to decide. They need to say, hey, you know, we'll listen to your experts and we'll decide who we think is the most credible. But now we're gonna have a whole bunch of different expert witnesses because uh the state prosecutor, Mark Alderman, said to the judge after the ruling that the Dobert motion was not granted that she will be allowed to testify about her findings. He said they are gonna have an expert toxicologist also review this. Now, mind you, Deanna did have Dr. Leske, Deanna Lesky did have several toxicologists, according to her, um review her findings, but they're going to go and find another expert toxicologist, if you will, to review those and testify at his trial in October, uh, tentatively scheduled for October. And then in response, Omara also said that we also are going to find another expert because Borgert was really more about the methodology. They wanted to undermine her methodology. They wanted to undermine that rule-out method that she used. So now they're gonna go get their own expert, somebody else. So again, battle the experts, but you know, and and and I am not a legal expert. I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying these are the questions that I have. You had this administrative hearing that went off the rails, the judge making rulings and opining on things that weren't even being asked of her. So that empowers somebody, in my opinion, who is used to quote unquote skirting the rules, breaking the rules, doing what they want, not being held accountable. And that is consistently what we have heard. I have heard from patient after patient, from employee after employee. You know, they're basically saying that this was a guy who was charming on the front end, but when their body started to break down due to what they felt like was his failure as a surgeon, not just for botch surgeries, but for the way he handled wound treatment, cases of necrosis, implants falling out of their bodies, the flesh rotting off of their stomach from their and causing people to have to go up to the emergency room, patient after patient, with the same complaints. And then she wants to weigh in that, you know, going back to the paperwork, she did ding him for not keeping proper paperwork. She did say, How do we know how much lidocaine you actually gave her? Because you didn't keep proper paperwork. So I will say, hats off to that. I don't think she was right to opine on Borgert having more credible testimony than Olesky because she didn't even hear from her. Um, which and that wasn't, again, that wasn't being asked of her, but it does go to what a lot of these patients have been saying. And you're talking about, you know, each of these hearings has piecemealed all of this. And you and I have covered this from the beginning. If you're not familiar with this, we broke this story. We were there at the very beginning. I called the Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office, asked them if they were investigating this. They didn't even know. Their public information officer hadn't even heard about it at that point. Then she calls me back later that afternoon. She goes, We are investigating. We have now given this to the major crimes. Personally, call me crazy, but I don't even know that they had assigned it to major crimes until I called about it. Right. But simultaneously, there was a website up on social media that was run by an anonymous individual that was basically saying, Hey, y'all, you think it's bad about what happened to Hillary? Look at all these other patients. Well, those patients started reaching out to me. They started sending me their medical files, started sending me their pictures. My inbox on Facebook looked like a war zone. Picture after picture of exposed open wounds, necrosis, infection, people crying, giving their stories to me and saying, I'm embarrassed about what happened. I've been permanently damaged. I don't want to go on the record with it, though, because it could hurt my job. I don't want to do that. Many people who were in the medical field who went to him because he was recommended by respected medical professionals over and over and over again. The same facilities were providing the surgical operating rooms, the same doctors were recommending him. All of these people knew there were good outcomes, y'all. But when it's almost like that little poem, when they were good, they were very good. When they were bad, they were very bad. Right. To the point where people were having to go to the emergency room, and Ben Brown was fussing at them for doing that. Because again, to your point, this is Michelangelo in his mind. I fed it, you know, I hadn't even seen a lot of those videos that you were referencing, but I did find an old Facebook page that he created years ago when he first moved to Northwest Florida that said he called himself the Michelangelo of plastic surgery. And I get that there is a an artistic quality to being a surgeon, but I think for a man, in my opinion, who has consistently placed his ego, his needs, what he wants over the betterment of his family, over the betterment of his patients. This is his when when a patient comes to him and says, My implants are falling out due to rotting flesh, you put um mesh in my body when I didn't ask for mesh and now it's infected. Or I have a strange hospital-borne infection that is so rare that the nursing staff has hardly heard of it, but then they get this one patient confused with another patient of Ben Brown's who had the same rare infection because they, you know, you hear the same stories over and over again. This is not a man who wants to hear criticism, in my opinion. He's going to attack and push back. He has attacked me personally and professionally multiple times. I assume that's just going to continue. Accountability is not something he stands up and accepts. He wants to push back and blame everyone else, in my opinion. That is what I have experienced. That is what I've heard from numerous patients. That was what struck me when I first started listening to all these patient stories. They were saying the same thing. They went to him and thought he was he was well recommended by this, you know, preferred doctor that they had to go to. They go to see him. He's charming. He tells them that he can help them, he can give them a mini money, mini mommy makeover. They need implants because a lot of these women had breast cancer. Right. And he does the deep flap surgery, which is basically taking fat fat from other parts of your body and rebuilding, you know, your breasts with your own tissue. Um, so he was doing this and and they were excited to do it, and they felt like they were in good hands. And some of them, their surgeries came out great, but a lot of the ones that I've spoken to, it didn't. And and he was not helpful when their body started to fall apart. And to a T, one after the other said, he told me it was my body's fault. He told me I wasn't drinking enough protein. He told me, was I a drug user? Was I a smoker? Was I drinking too much? So it's all about it. Oh, I could just go on and on. I know I feel like I feel like I'm going off the track here a little bit. But there was just so much because I've listened to these women and men as well, y'all. They just don't want to go on the record with it. But, you know, they're humiliated because they're embarrassed by the way their bodies looked, they're dealing with pain. And then a lot of them are already going to it because they're just going to see him because they do want to feel better about their body. Right, right. And then he uses that against them in this almost like psychological warfare kind of way, gaslighting them as to blaming them. It's your body that's the problem. So when you mention that to me about this narcissistic medical approach, whatever that is that you're medical narcissism. Medical narcissism. I, you know, I again, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not an expert. I don't know if Ben Brown is a medical narcissist or not. But I do know that so many of these patients that I've talked to, when we get done with these interviews, James can attest, testify to this because we've been through so many of these patient interviews. They're like, gosh, you know, I wonder if my story is even gonna matter. Is what happened to me even that important? And they are wounded for life. Right, right. One woman, her arm doesn't work anymore. Another woman has to wear tight clothing all the time because it hold keeps the pain at bay. Another one doesn't ever want a bathing suit or have her husband touch her because she's embarrassed about the way that her body looks. They feel like Frankenstein dolls. Right. And this guy wants to tell them they didn't drink enough protein, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Or eat enough chicken or uh hydrate or whatever. I read many journals, but there was one journal from one lady. She's so sweet. I kept her journal for almost a year. And I read it over and over and over. And the agony and stuff like I said, I am in health care. I will never scold anyone for telling me how you feel, and especially if you think I can help you. It's not my job to judge you or make you feel less than that makes that makes me so upset. Because if you leave out of my pharmacy or where I'm working and you feel less about yourself when you leave and you don't feel better or you feel like I don't care, that I just say, never mind.

SPEAKER_05 35:24

Because you care about the patient.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Yeah, and and it's not their fault. Even somebody coming in, even people coming in and they're in the throes of addiction, they don't deserve to be to be judged or to be made feel less than. This is brilliant, how Ben Brown has worked this, because the people this far out that are still saying, I wonder if my story matters. Of course it matters. You matter. Now, he, this is his stuff. And then here they are, living this, living this life, going through this stuff, and then yet here we got an admin hearing where we got a judge jumping up and wiping his tears and holding her little pearls and babysitting him and stuff. And then we got Borgert who comes here. I'm sorry, I will not listen to you tell me a damn thing if you're gonna half-ass tell me stuff. We're gonna talk about this bowl every time we talk about lidocaine. We're gonna talk about pliers. It is in the Department of Health's own findings. That is part of their findings. The fact that you can't even be held to take proper notes when that is the minimal standard of care, and we're out here acting like we need to have a Dalbert hearing because some vet pharmacologist over here decided he wants to come grift up in Northwest Florida. Get the hell out of here.

SPEAKER_05 36:35

I know, and I did look up Borgert's credentials, and he didn't have anything to do with veterinary medicine as far as his teachings, but he is a uh like a cursory member of a vet board from the city. Well, these are people. That's the problem. It's confusing for that anyway.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Well, it Ben Brown and or Borgert and or Omar, whoever they all are, ain't realize these are real live people, and they've created this hell for these people. Can you imagine? This is the worst nightmare. You are there and you are on a operating table or a procedure table, and you can't count on the physician to call 911. You can't count on him to have his stethoscope because you're in cardiac arrest. You can't account on him to have an oximeter or a crash cart or oxygen or to have enough adequate staff, and you're up there building out like we're adding on to our back house over here.

SPEAKER_05 37:27

I know. Well, and going back to that paperwork again, you know, there were several patients that I interviewed, Jane Hawkins being one. That was one of the ones that the Florida Department of Health focused their investigation on. Um, and there were others that basically said that they had received unwanted BBLs or Brazilian butt lifts. And uh the administrative judge Yolanda Green found that essentially there wasn't enough evidence to show that Jane Hawkins got an unwanted BBL because she had signed off on some kind of consent form. But when you talk to Jane Hawkins, now they they kicked us out of the room for that because she has civil litigation pending as well, so they weren't allowing us to listen to her testimony at that administrative hearing. But I've read all the court documents about it and certainly interviewed Jane before she filed that civil suit. And uh she talked about how she doesn't remember signing that. They that she made it clear there's also another patient that sued him and and lost, that was Wendy Cardin. But I've I've talked to her both before and after that that hearing as well. She also felt like that there were you he was mad at her for not signing some documentation that was basically gonna not hold him accountable if something were to go wrong. Um and then Jane Hawkins also didn't want to sign uh consent that they she, you know, Wendy Carden didn't want to consent to anything foreign in her body. She didn't want to consent to mesh. He ended up putting mesh in her stomach, and there was some fine print that basically said he could do that. And that was one of the things that I think they used for why they're that he wasn't liable for what all the infection and the terrible damage that she suffered, including the loss of her arm to a certain extent. She's only got 20% use of her arm, Wendy Cardin. But going back to Jane Hawkins, I know I go down these rabbit holes, but you know, she was like, I don't remember signing this form that my husband dropped me off. We were prepared for surgery. We had thoroughly talked about everything. I had already signed all my paperwork, and he wanted her to sign basically something that would allow for that, if you will. And she doesn't remember signing it because they'd already given her the twilight drugs, the drugs, and that's her opinion. That and there were other patients that I've talked to who said the same thing. They were like, I told him what I wanted, what I didn't want him. I thought we were all on the same page, and then last minute he's wanting me to sign this and sign that. And it is happening in these ORs, it is happening in these facilities in front of other people. And I'm not saying all these witnesses have to jump in and weigh in, but you know, when you see the outcomes, this is a relatively small medical community. When you see the outcomes and you hear repeatedly necrosis, infection, women wounds that won't heal for years, women going to the ER with high white blood cell counts and fevers that won't go away and wounds that won't close. Eglin Air Force Base treated Jane Hawkins because she could not get the wound across her stomach to heal. You could see her muscle wall. They she finally went to the ER. A nurse friend of hers convinced her to go. She goes to the ER. And a doctor who operates on soldiers who have been injured in war said, I have to treat you basically like a wounded soldier. I can't even begin to address and repair all this damage until I get this wound closed. Right, right. You know, and that is so much of it. So there are a lot of questions about this paperwork. And my point in bringing a lot of this up is one, uh there have been a lot of allegations amongst the people that I've talked to that he is doing some shady stuff in the way he's having people sign these consent forms. And then two, filling out his paperwork after Hillary died, how much of that was going on. Right. Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office did not treat it like a crime scene that night. We've got the body cam footage. We've played that for you before. In fact, you can take a little listen now to what one of the deputies who was first on scene had to say about that.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

Inform you, I guess. Uh I don't see reason for for more now, but basically we got a med call at a doctor's office here in uh Navarre where uh I guess uh plastic surgeon was working on his wife. And we were told you wouldn't be coming out of the past. I guess uh gonna have to get all their names and do a quick info on it just in case something comes back work. Yeah, somebody says, oh, he's trying to kill him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:17

So basically what you were hearing from that deputy is that, well, there were two nurses there and their marriage was good, so I'm gonna hang my hat on that if the family has any problem with what happened to her. Yeah. And that none of that is is accurate. They were not nurses. Their marriage wasn't good, according to friends and family. He was already behind on alimony and child support from the first wife. Things were already going sideways according to her parents, that she was considering leaving, that she may have even written him a letter saying as much, that he had thrown her across the room, according to her parents, in interviews with me, um, just weeks before this particular surgery. She was at her sitting on a stool at their home and that he picked her up and threw her across the room and broke her tailbone. And she didn't immediately tell her family because she they felt like she just didn't want them to think that she had rushed into another marriage after leaving another one and was embarrassed and was worried about uprooting and all the upheaval that would come with her family. So I say all that to say this like this guy, according to all the people that I have talked to, sure didn't have any problem covering his tracks if there were alleged if these allegations are true. If he is having them sign consent forms when they're not in their right mind and it's going against what these patients have discussed, if he did not want to have to pay for another divorce, if he was gonna have to potentially go through one. And they also said that when she was on life support in the hospital, that he was the one that kept reminding everybody, well, if we're gonna pull the plug, we gotta do it before such and such a date, because that's when her life insurance expires. And he was telling them, according to her parents, that that was to the benefit of their children, but they were floored that he was even considering money at a time like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Yeah, that would I I can't even imagine. Yeah, and with the deputy him opining too, I'm so tired of people opining. Pining. You know, you're not a marriage counselor. You and you just went in there and and I my pet peeve with people that when we're going through I'm gonna get emotional, I'm probably gonna cry today. Going through things where people are murdered, your family members gone. This ain't fixable. Hillary's not here anymore. Her parents can never have her back, her children can never have her back. When these people think they're gonna yuck it up and smirk and laugh, where's the funny part, deputy, about this marriage or those nurses?

SPEAKER_05 44:27

Or these plastic surgery procedures.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

And how dare you say, Well, I checked on that, so we good. That's all I'm gonna do out here in these streets. We got we got the biased here. Just FYI, and just for the record, most health care professionals are not like this. People go into health care because they want to take care of people. We love people. It is if you're just going into it for money, you could go do something else. Basically, you could do something in banking, you could do something in investments or whatever. But you have to care. And all this happens. Look at these patients. We go down the road, everything. I mean, it's almost like he's a lucky charms leprechaun. Everything he does, he touched gold, it's all right. And that's why he keeps getting away with these things over and over and over to have people. This is what happens in real life. Let's don't even pretend like we're talking about doctors and stuff. That's why it's called gaslighting. We got a movie back from in the 40s where the man just decided, I'm gonna screw her brain, I'm gonna keep turning the lights out, lights out, and when she goes, it's dark, and you say, No, it ain't. No, it ain't does you. You know, so we got gaslighting going on with stuff like this. The thing is, and then here's the sad part. You report it to the Department of Health, and they want to act like it's the coolest thing to do to not pay attention to it or to minimize it or whatever. The thing is, if we keep going like this, it's going to be where people can just operate on you, like you said, like we're out in a war zone and stuff. There has to be accountability, and I promise you, every surgeon, nurse, pharmacist, tech, respiratory, everybody in healthcare, if you are not doing anything wrong, you don't have one problem with any of the laws or rules in our state or country. Exactly. At all.

SPEAKER_05 46:09

We, of course, love Joe Czar here on Gulf Coast Confidential. He is a supporter of this program, and we appreciate that. So if a catastrophic injury changes your life, you have questions. And sometimes those insurance companies just simply aren't on your side. General practice attorneys won't cut it. You need a specialist, and that's Joe Czarzar with Czarzar Law. He is a board-certified civil trial specialist. He doesn't just settle cases, he will try them before a jury and fight for you. No upfront fees, no excuses, just aggressive representation that clients deserve. So if you have any questions, don't settle for less, demand the best. You can call Czarzar Law at 855 Hire Joe or visit czarzarlaw.com.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

Look at what he put those girls through. I knew I thought about that. They'll never be the same because of him.

SPEAKER_05 46:56

Yeah. Well, and I think that's why they were so afraid, if you will, of calling 911. It's this atmosphere like we've talked about before, you know, even with the Shiknowsky, like why people, so many people say, well, why didn't the OR staff stop him from removing Mr. Bryan's liver instead of his spleen, which he was supposed to be removing? And I think it's a toxic work environment, is the short answer. People, there's a hierarchy. Doctors are in charge. And I think these young women felt the same way. I think they felt intimidated. This is a guy that apparently is running his office half hazard by many accounts. Um, but they don't really necessarily know that. Again, and I'm not minimizing the young lady that was a vet tech. We all have to have a job. Good for her. But when that's your background, of course you're not going to question him. He's the expert in a field. And the other young lady, she also had a medical background, um, but she was not a licensed nurse. And yet they're still learning. That's why she was there was to learn. And they didn't have the benefit of post-hindsight, you know, hindsight's 2020 of talking to these many patients who had complained of different things. And that's why uh many people think he did have inexperienced folks working for him because, like the Deborah Guys, who we've talked to before, who pointed out, hey, you're cutting corners. There were other employees, like when he got rid of the biohazard service, he kept the red bags that would indicate, hey, there's tissue in here, biodegradable type things, if you will, or bio stuff. Hazardous. Hazardous stuff. Um, you know, and then he cut that and it was just putting it in the red bags and then throwing it in the dumpster. And that's when you end up, according to some employees, with the labia in the parking lot. Somebody had had a labioplasty, and they had put they'd found a labia in the parking lot when they were all going to home that night. That was at the Pensacola office before he moved out to Gulf Breeze. So, at any rate, there are according to many people, lots of haphazard decisions, lots of cutting corners. And whenever he gets criticized or called out, there are temper tantrums, there are threats, there's anger, there's throwing people across the room, according to Hillary's parents. So, this is not a man that is, like you said, most healthcare professionals, you don't even have to defend yourself this many times because ideally you're following the law, you're doing what needs to be done, you're taking care of your patients to the best of your ability. Sometimes mistakes are gonna happen. A lot of these women, like we've talked to, did have undergo um cancer treatment. And there are some experts that I talked to that said that can impact their skin and make them more susceptible to problems post-surgery. But here's the deal: even after he messed it up, this is a whole nother sidebar I haven't even gotten into yet. The these women had so much trouble finding somebody who would repair the damage. And that was heartbreaking in and of itself. And many of them went to this facility in New Orleans that was able to fix them, even though they still have scars, you know, emotionally and and physically. But they were able to make those repairs. Yeah. So was the skin really that damaged? Is that really the excuse you're gonna hang your hat on? Right. And also you chose to operate on them. Exactly. You knew those risks going in there. You didn't mind cashing out because those deep flap, that's what I'm being told. A lot of Ben Brown stuff is cash only. Well, guess what, y'all? Insurance pays for that to the tune of 25 to 50,000 abreast. Wow. Wow. So that's a lot of money. That's what I was told. I could be wrong about the cost, but all I'm saying is that was a guaranteed cash cow. And that is what I keep hearing over and over again, whether it's about Shiknowsky and toxic work environments and people being afraid to speak up when they see wrong things happening, to surgeons being protected for these questionable decisions and in some cases fatal decisions, because they are the cash cows. They are the ones that they're gonna pay and bring the money in. Right. And it's just it's it's upsetting that the Florida Department of Health didn't pay more attention to so many of these patients who had been complaining and were saying that their complaints were ignored. And then the next thing you know, now the whole state, the whole country's watching when Hillary Brown dies and all these patients stepped forward. But where was the Department of Health then? Right. Where were all these organizations and facilities that have been named over and over again in my interviews who knew what Ben Brown was doing and said and did nothing anyway because they wanted to cash out?

SPEAKER_01 51:09

Oh, definitely. Supposedly. Yeah. Well, we talked to the Department of Health, and the man that got on there said, hold on, he went and got in his car to talk to us. And then he did what I call the Michigan J. Frog Show, you know, dance, dance, dance, and everything, and said everything and tried to teach us the three branches of of law and this, that, and the other. And I'm like, buddy, you just got to ask a question. Just think, I mean, it's so much easier to do the right thing. How honorable would it have been for our state of Florida to come in there and go, you know what, we care about the citizens of Florida? We are not gonna let people like this. So you chose Ben Brown over the millions and millions and millions of people in Florida? How stupid are you?

SPEAKER_05 51:47

And how did you select this administrative judge to hear these allegations of him violating administrative law and the standard of medical care? What experience does Yolanda Green have in evaluating medical malpractice cases? What experience and credentials and expert credibility does she have to decide who's more credible? Borgert, who she heard from, or Deanna, who she never heard from? Deanna O'Leski.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

Well, and I mean, you it it is it is an outlier. It is an anomaly, this situation with Ben Brown, because you could let's just say we have another surgeon over here. He's going through a divorce and things are bad, and he might be yelling at his staff or whatever. Stuff is not acceptable. Somebody tells on him, he might get put on a behavioral contract or something. But they for some reason they chose, and he ain't that great of a moneymaker. My God, it's not that hard. Dr. Terry DeBroe, who's married to one of them real housewives on that thing there, he got on when you were on Nancy Grace. But then he said, he thinks he's a mad scientist. He said, This is the minimum of care here. He's basically like, I can't believe Florida let him do that. And I can't believe if it's that hard for you and you're Michelangelo, me think she ain't Michelangelo because there have been people we have seen surgeries of people that they have been the horrors of people, you know, burns, burns in a fire or something.

SPEAKER_05 53:10

Are these the tools of Michelangelo?

SPEAKER_01 53:11

I don't know. Apparently it might be this one, it might be this big old.

SPEAKER_05 53:15

Apparently, it's not the stethoscope because you don't have to have that handy.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

Nope. I just can't believe that. And I can't believe that the Department of Help didn't say, but say that to him. You mean to tell me you don't have your stethoscope, your blood pressure cuff, and your oximeter. Every time I've been to the doctor, even for a wellness check, those all three things come out. I mean, they got them on their person. So I I just think this has been a favorite. And I think that they got caught with their pants down and they've doubled down. And just a little thing about Shaknowsky, there were other medical doctors in the room with Shaknowsky. So what do we do? We got a hierarchy of we're gonna say, we're gonna hide the ball, or we got a shell game going with our with things in Florida, because that upsets me, and I will keep saying it. Healthcare professionals that are honorable don't do this stuff. This is why this is so egregious, and people all over the world are going, what the actual I mean, I got some muffin mix right here, and I got teaspoons right there. We even measure to make muffins, even down here in the south, even if the ancestors are going, that's enough, that's enough butter, you know, stop. We're still gonna measure it, you know. So I just don't understand. We we're all acting stupid. We need to have a hearing because he's crying around and stuff, and Dr. Borg.

SPEAKER_05 54:30

Because she's not an expert. So there.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

And we're just telling half the truth. That's the part. Okay, go ahead and and be adversarial. Our system's adversarial, but you cannot. He's the one that even told us that he had a bowl. This I will not get over, and that's what I tell people on Facebook. Be prepared to be sick of me and this bowl and now and these syringes in this bowl, and now these pliers. Because if we're gonna talk about how it was done, we're gonna talk about it, all of it, how it was done.

SPEAKER_05 54:57

Absolutely. Well, after that several hours of testimony between Deanna Olesky and Dr. Borgert, and Chris Borgert was saying that Deanna Olesky's methodology was quote unquote flawed, and that's what he was testifying to at the Daubert motion. Take a listen to what he had to say in court.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

Well, her methodology uh seems to have changed a bit. Uh initially, in the department in her deposition for the uh Department of Health, uh, which which occurred first, um she reiterated the statement that this is a clinical diagnosis, and that's one of my first points of criticism is that let's let's parse the the situations here. Yes, lidocaine is lidocaine toxicity is clinically in and when I say clinically, that's in the realm uh of treating a live patient, of diagnosing what's going on with the patients and and treating a live patient. There's another realm that's forensic, in other words, it's looking backwards at what happened. You often don't have uh a blood level for everything you might like to have a blood level on in the clinical situation in the moment. So that diagnosis can appropriately include a conservative uh diagnosis of lidocaine toxicity because as was mentioned, there is an emulsion therapy, and and just let me tie the link there. The lipid emulsion is uh a solution used to bind up the lidocaine in the blood. That's a fat solution. So just like that fat binds lidocaine, the fat under the skin binds lidocaine and and holds on to it. Um but there's a difference between a clinical determination when all the facts are not yet at hand, and a forensic determination uh where you look back at all the facts that have emerged and you have a chance to dig into all of the medical peer-reviewed journals, look at all of the data, and come up with a conclusion. So um I'm sure in the moment, a clinical it is a clinical diagnosis, but when you're looking back, you have to take uh all of the factors into account.

SPEAKER_05 57:26

Borgert was basically saying that he thought her methodology was flawed. He didn't necessarily support the rule out method, which in a nutshell is ruling out other potential causes of death. Um and she went through everything that she had looked at, what possibly else could have could have caused that. And she had done that. And and that was one of the things that Drake pointed to in his decision when he made his ruling and why he explained that he ruled like he did against their motion, was basically because she had looked and ruled out so many other options, including no evidence of excessive bleeding, major vascular damage, peripherations, um, fat emboli from the surgeries. He also ruled, she also ruled out, he pointed out other potential causes, including significant natural disease, infection, stroke, physical trauma other than surgical, insect or snake bites, airway obstruction, strangulation, or suffocation. One of the things that Borgert um kept bringing up as well, like, well, and even Yolanda Green mentioned this in her findings again when she was inappropriately opining, in my opine. In my own opining opinion, um, that basically they were saying, well, she didn't test the organs of Hillary to determine, basically find out finding out more information about if lidocaine toxicity played a role. Well, because Hillary was an organ donor. Yeah, she had donated her organs. And Deanna went so far to to follow up with these patients who received these um organs, and they were all doing fine. They didn't have any issues. There wasn't anything to indicate that lidocaine, uh, you know, that there were no organ malfunctions that contributed to all of this.

SPEAKER_01 59:04

Right. Oh, and and Hillary was an otherwise healthy, 30 young, 30-something-year-old lady.

SPEAKER_05 59:10

33 years old, mother of three, had everything to live for in life. And and it is tragic. And I do think that there's a lot that this is not just about Dr. Ben Brown. This is about how do we treat patients in the state of Florida. If there is a problem, can you trust that the Florida Department of Health is going to give you a fair shake? Are they going to listen to your concerns? Are they going to fairly evaluate them? And I would say that's a big fat no, in my opinion. It is very selective as to who they listen to, and it does seem to be geared toward making money. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I'll be glad to talk about that. Let us know. But I have repeatedly called the Florida Department of Health and been ignored. There have been times when they've called me back, but there are lots more times when they haven't. Um, and I've certainly reached out to Ben Brown numerous times, like we've said before. He is always welcome to come on this show. I reached out to him before I even covered the Dalbert hearing to see if he wanted to wait and I did not hear back. That is not surprising. Also, defendants are told not to talk ahead of these criminal hearings. He has pleaded not guilty. He feels like he is getting being treated unfairly in all of this. He that he feels like he is being singled out according to letters and threats that he has made to me. Um, but at any rate, we'll see how it all plays out. But in the meantime, what played out at that Daubert motion was a setback. I think they really were hoping that he was gonna say, no, our own medical examiner can't even reliably testify about this because she's not a toxicologist, but that's not what happened. So the trial is moving forward. It is tentatively set for October. And I thought it was great that Judge Drake pointed out that, you know, hey, the very man who is being tried for manslaughter is the one that you're relying on for information, Chris Borger. Right. So take a listen to what Judge Drake had to say when he did finally issue his decision on that Dobert motion.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:59

Well, I wouldn't expect there to be. Because the three scenarios that I can think of that are unique to when the defendant the husband of the decedent is the operating decision. I think that there are three possible scenarios. One is actually not improperly measuring. Another impossibility. He accidentally administered something incorrectly, and he didn't realize it. Or he truly believed it. He administered it correctly, so the medical records would reflect it if he had measured it correctly. Or we have to consider the fact that the record. Although medical records I don't know that they are clouded with the same reliability as the medical records by doctors who are not also the defendant. So there is a third possibility. I don't know which possibility they're recorded, but I have identified the reason areas. But I can't ignore the fact that the defendant is the one who wrote them. And so to some extent that they are self-serving.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:44

Well, this certainly, you know, this does get me fired up and stuff because it's not right. And I have a feeling if we and other folks weren't talking about this, because I remember the day that we went over there to restore plastic surgery on Nantaholo Road, which is in Gulf Breeze, which I've heard some of these deputies call it Navarre, which it's not, over there. And I remember using my phone, 1D6 here, looking through the phone, and you were doing, you know, talking about this is what happened right inside these doors. Hillary, at 33 years old, went in there just for some simple things, and now she's not with us anymore. And there sits a poinsettia for the holidays, and that's what started it. And we have not been able to put this down yet because it's wrong.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:30

It is wrong, and it's never ending. And there's so many patients that still feel like they haven't had justice. I mean, we've had so many people come to us and want to share their stories both on and off the record. And I certainly talked to Hillary Brown's parents numerous times, and they're heartbroken. They're heartbroken that their grandchildren have lost their mother, they're heartbroken that they've lost their daughter. For for what? Yeah. You know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to have plastic surgery procedures. It shouldn't have cost her her life.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

Right, right. And all he had to do was not be so arrogant, and he should have asked for help many times, but mostly through 911 for Hillary. Absolutely. All right.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:13

Well, thank you so much, Pam. We appreciate it. And thank you so much for joining us. That's it for episode nine of Beauty Buyer Beware, Dr. Ben Brown. I'm your host, writer, and producer Molly Barrows, with co-host and researcher Pam Hill. And a big thanks as always to our director, editor, and production engineer, James Roy. Remember, you can check out more episodes of Gulf Coast Confidential wherever you listen to your favorite podcast or the Gulf Coast Confidential YouTube channel. We would just love it if you would like and subscribe, and we'll see you next time.