The family of a Morgan Stanley executive has filed a lawsuit against Silver Hill Hospital that charges the New Canaan institution with negligence that resulted in his suicide at the facility.
Leo J. Civitillo, a Redding resident, was global head of fixed income capital markets at Morgan Stanley. He was admitted to Silver Hill Hospital on Jan. 22, 2018, for “anxiety, depression, psychosis with delusional thinking, and following a recent suicide attempt.” He died Feb. 17, 2018, at the age of 43 following an overdose of chloroquine, an anti-malaria medication that he arranged to be smuggled into the hospital.
In their lawsuit, the Civitillo family accused Silver Hill of failing to properly assess and monitor Civitillo while providing an inadequate medication regimen and failing to be cognizant of his suicidal tendencies.
The lawsuit accuses the hospital of allowing Civitillo access to the internet in order to research suicide methods and having possession of a cellphone and iPad in violation of hospital regulations. Silver Hill is also accused of falsifying records on bed checks for the patient and allowing Civitillo to have an unsupervised meeting with an unnamed individual who was not on the approved visitor list.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages from the hospital, which did not publicly comment on the litigation.
