Self-Help Seminar Firm Settles Suit Over Breakdown

SANTA ANA —  A Costa Mesa company that offers self-help seminars settled a lawsuit Tuesday with a 24-year-old woman who alleged that the courses left her paranoid and depressed and caused her to attempt suicide.

Details of the settlement were confidential and not released.

Gabriella Martinez, a former journalism student from Bellflower, contended in her lawsuit that Lifespring Inc.’s human potential seminars caused her to have a mental breakdown and put her in mental institutions for three years.

Martinez further alleged that Lifespring was performing psychotherapy when it had no license to do so.

The settlement came one day after Martinez testified in Orange County Superior Court that she was forced to reveal her sexual experiences and divulge her family problems before a group of people at a five-day Lifespring seminar.

Lifespring has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing in the case. Gregory H. Halliday, Lifespring’s attorney, said that Martinez’s “mental problems were not caused by her taking the course.”

Halliday described the self-awareness seminars as “experiential education” in which a person takes an active role and “learns by participating.”

Halliday said it was the company’s insurance carrier that decided to settle the case. “If (the insurance carrier) had not decided to settle, Lifespring would have continued to fight the case,” he said.

Ray Hendrickson, Martinez’s attorney, said that his client’s life was forever changed by the “advanced” Lifespring course she signed up for in January, 1986. Several weeks after completing the seminar she “developed pathological symptoms of depression, withdrawal, sleeplessness . . . and later took an overdose” of sleeping pills to kill herself, Hendrickson said.

“She was hospitalized for three out of four years since the seminar . . . and her medical bills totaled more than half a million dollars,” Hendrickson said. “Her condition is guarded and she is still suffering from some mild paranoia.”

Nonetheless, he added, “Gabby is very happy with the outcome” of the lawsuit.