Grounded Pilot Sues VA After 10 Years Medicated For What He Did Not Have

Former Navy Pilot Sues US Government over Bipolar Diagnosis
Associated Press
by Bill Draper
Oct 06, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A former Navy pilot has filed a $35 million lawsuit against the federal government alleging that a Veterans Affairs doctor misdiagnosed him with a mental illness that caused him to lose his ability to fly commercial airplanes and be wrongly treated for the disorder for a decade.

William Royster, 53, of Kansas City, said in the lawsuit filed Friday that a doctor at the local VA medical center diagnosed him with bipolar disorder in April 2004 and said he could not work in any capacity. The doctor also said the condition was permanent, he contends.

After he had been treated and medicated for more than 10 years for the disorder, Royster said a different psychiatrist at the medical center told him last November that he was not bipolar.

"From the review of the records, he (Mr. Royster) never had any manic symptoms and he never met the criteria for the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. ... Thus in my professional opinion, I do not believe that Mr. Royster has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder," Dr. Shreeja Kumar wrote on Nov. 18.

Royster was flying a fighter jet on a training mission associated with Desert Storm on June 4, 1996, when he was shot down, the lawsuit says. He was injured when he ejected from the jet and honorably discharged from the Navy that November.
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