After the assault, when the peer review committee at Houston Northwest Medical Center requested a medical opinion on Brown's application for reappointment, Brown provided, per Texas Medical Board notes, "a one-page psychiatric report signed by Dr. George Glass. It has been reported in the media [Houston Press] and confirmed by Dr. Glass, that the report is an exact transcription of a suggested report supplied to the psychiatrist" by Brown's lawyers. In the letter, Glass stated that he never saw his patient exhibit any behavior that might interfere with his clinical privileges.
The Texas Medical Board, however, was a little more concerned.
By Mandy Oaklander
Seen leaving the courtroom during his latest trial, Dr. Michael Brown was acquitted of assaulting his latest wife.
By Mandy Oaklander
In a dramatic gesture after the trial, attorney Dick DeGuerin cut off Brown's ankle bracelet.
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FEATURE: The Good Doctor -- Michael Brown made it big in the hand clinic business. But as his wife discovered, there was a much darker side to this dynamic surgeon.
FESTURE: Taking His Medicine -- Troubled hand surgeon Michael Brown pursues custody of his two children
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In May 2002, Brown entered into an agreed order with the board placing him on probation for seven years "due to inability to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety due to illness, drunkenness, excessive use of drugs, narcotics or physical condition and unprofessional conduct." Seven months later, after testing positive for cocaine, his license was temporarily suspended and his probation was extended to ten years.
The drug testing was a point of contention among Brown's previous treating psychiatrists, including Glass.
Initially, Brown tried to skirt the order to submit to drug testing by telling the board that he didn't live in Houston, but spent most of his time surrounded by the splendor of the wildebeests and endangered swamp deer on his Normangee ranch, "Castlemane."
After this matter was properly addressed, and Brown began submitting urine samples, the board received an anonymous call alleging that Brown was abusing cocaine and searching online for ways to, per board records, "'clean his hair' because he feared a hair test for drugs." This was because many of his urine samples were too diluted.
In October 2002, he was ordered to submit a hair sample as well as urine; the hair tested positive for cocaine, and the urine was negative. Glass questioned the efficacy of testing the hair, indicating his belief that Brown had not used cocaine in well over a year. (Meanwhile, in what was either a transparent bid to provide an excuse for any booze found in his system or a genuine concern for the freshness of his breath, Brown found a dentist, David Mulherin, obliging enough to write a prescription for a mouthwash containing alcohol.)
While the board received complaints from some of Brown's patients, other patients simply sued. In a few cases, plaintiffs secured the expert testimony of Houston hand surgeon Gerard Gabel, who wrote in one case that Brown's patented trigger-finger technique "does not, in review of the literature, have any demonstrable anatomic validation. In other words, there is no proven safety of this procedure...due to the number of failures that I have seen consequent to this procedure, the persistent use of this procedure is well below the standard of care when compared to conventional trigger digit release."
In another case involving the same trigger-release technique, Gabel wrote, "This is not an accepted procedure in the general community and in that sense is an 'experimental' procedure."
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Of course, Brown didn't just have to face the scrutiny of the Texas Medical Board; he faced criminal charges and a civil complaint and divorce proceedings from Darlina as well.
District Attorney Mike McDougal took the unusual route of waiting for the outcome of Darlina's cases. As Dick DeGuerin would do with subsequent wife Rachel, Brown's attorneys, Rocket Rosen and Jack Zimmerman, tried to paint Darlina as a harlot who had extramarital affairs.
Darlina's attorneys, Tommy Fibich and Wendy Burgower, only had to point to the 2001 assault.
As jurors deliberated, Brown followed Burgower as she was moving the case file from the courtroom to her car in the courthouse parking lot. He told her he was going to "get" her. Fibich and Burgower brought this to Judge Michael Mayes's attention, requesting that he halt the deliberation, recall the jury and enter Brown's utterance into evidence. Mayes declined. It probably wouldn't have made any difference; the jury still found Brown liable for abusing Darlina, awarding her nearly $5 million and custody of the couple's two daughters.
Respecting Darlina's odd wish that Brown not face prison time, McDougal offered Brown a real sweetheart of a deal: Brown pleaded no contest to assault and received ten years' probation, with an added bonus — if he didn't violate any terms in the first five years, he could ask a judge to be released from probation early. If he screwed up, however, he'd face prison.
When Brown's drug testing for the Texas Medical Board turned up another positive result for cocaine in 2005, the board took it seriously enough to revoke his license. But when McDougal brought this to the attention of Montgomery County District Court Judge Suzanne Stovall, the judge took a page from the George Glass playbook and questioned the veracity of the testing procedure. Ultimately, Stovall lifted Brown's probation.
For the first time in a while, things were looking up for Brown: Although he could no longer practice medicine in Texas, he was now free of mandatory drug tests, and he had met and married the former Rachel Spaniel, a single mother with whom he would eventually have a son and a daughter.
