California accuses S&P of deception in $4-billion lawsuit

California has filed suit against Wall Street's biggest credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, charging the firm with violating the state's False Claims Act by using “magic numbers” and “guesses” to inflate ratings that ultimately cost California public pension funds an estimated $1 billion.

The action was filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court and came a day after federal prosecutors filed suit against the bond-rating agency, alleging that S&P gave top marks to troubled mortgage-backed securities that later failed, helping to trigger the financial crisis.

Document: U.S. Sues Standard & Poor’s over mortgage bond ratings

California will seek $4 billion in damages after S&P’s ratings cost state pension funds what it estimates are about $1 billion in losses. The state can seek triple damages, along with penalties, under the False Claims Act.

“Those who lost homes in California were first-grade teachers, firefighters ... we talk about the impact of S&P’s conduct, it’s profound,” Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris told the Times in Washington after a news conference there announcing the federal and state suits. “They pretended to be an independent agency and we believe the evidence is clear it was quite the contrary.”

The barrage of state and federal actions signal an aggressive new push against one of the mortgage crisis’ key actors. The California action is the first use of its False Claims Act by Harris to pursue a major player in the mortgage meltdown. Harris in 2011 created a mortgage fraud strike force to pursue investigations related to the housing crisis and said she would use her powers under the act to pursue securities cases.

Under the state law, which makes it a crime to defraud the state, damages of up to three times the amount of the claim can be awarded if the victim was an institutional investor, such as one of the state's pension funds. In particular, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities and other financial instruments rated by S&P during the boom years.

S&P, which is a unit of publisher McGraw Hill, on Tuesday denounced the state and federal actions.

“The [U.S. Department of Justice] and some states have filed meritless civil lawsuits against S&P," the company said in a statement. "We will vigorously defend S&P against these unwarranted claims.  S&P has always been committed to serving the interests of investors and all market participants by providing independent opinions on creditworthiness based on available information."

The California suit alleges that investors relied on S&P to rate securities because these big investors had access to only general descriptions of the mortgages and other investments backing these securities. Institutional investors relied on S&P because they were required to purchase investments that got a “AAA” rating, meaning they were highly sound and bore little risk.

While S&P has tried in other cases to argue that it was protected under the 1st Amendment to state an opinion about certain financial products, that argument may not hold up if federal or state investigators are able to prove that the ratings agency knowingly gave improper evaluations, said Kurt Eggert, a Chapman University law professor.

“I am not sure that defense will hold if California or the feds can prove that they knowingly did not provide effective ratings,” Eggert said. “If the feds and the states can show that the ratings agencies knowingly diverged from their system in order to make money, the 1st Amendment defense might crumble.”

The California suit alleges that, from 2004 to 2007, S&P misrepresented to the state pension funds that its ratings were not influenced by economic interests and were based solely on objective analysis. Instead, the company lowered its standards to make money, the suit alleges, and suppressed efforts to develop more accurate models.

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Times staff writer Jim Puzzanghera in Washington contributed to this report.

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Suspected child molester left L.A. archdiocese for L.A. schools

A former priest and suspected child molester left employment with the Los Angeles archdiocese to work for the L.A. Unified School District, officials confirmed Sunday.

The former clergyman, Joseph Pina, did not work with children in his school district job, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy said. He added that, as a result of the disclosures, Pina would no longer be employed by the nation's second-largest school system.

Over the weekend, Deasy was unable to pull together Pina's full employment history, but said the district already was looking into the matter of Pina's hiring.

"I find it troubling," he said of the disclosures about Pina. "And I also want to understand what knowledge that we had of any background problems when hiring him, and I don't yet know that."

L.A. Unified itself has come under fire in the last year for its handling of employees accused of sexual misconduct.

Pina, 66, was laid off from his full-time district job last year, but returned to work episodically to organize events. One event he may have helped organize was a ribbon-cutting Saturday for a new education facility. School district officials over the weekend, however, could not confirm that. Pina did not attend the event, and the district could not confirm payment for any help he may have provided.

Pina's name emerged in documents released by the archdiocese to comply with a court order. His case was one of many in which church officials failed to take action to protect child victims and in which first consideration was given to helping the offending priests rather than their victims, according to the documentation.

A just-released, internal 1993 psychological evaluation states that Pina "remains a serious risk for acting out." The evaluation recounts how Pina was attracted to a victim, an eighth-grade girl, when he saw her in a costume.

"She dressed as Snow White ... I had a crush on Snow White, so I started to open myself up to her," he told the psychologist. "I felt like I fell in love with her. I got sexually involved with her, but never intercourse. She was about 17 when we got involved sexually, and it continued until she was about 19."

In a report sent to a top Mahony aide, the psychologist expressed concern the abuse was never reported to authorities.

Pina's evaluation also includes a recommendation "to take appropriate measures and precautions to insure that he is not in a setting where he can victimize others." Pina continued to work as a pastor as late as March 1998.

School district officials could not verify Pina's hiring date over the weekend, but he took a job with L.A. Unified as the school system was carrying out the nation's largest school construction program. His job involved community outreach, building support for school projects, while also finding out communities' concerns and trying to address them, officials said. Such work was crucial to the program, because even though communities wanted new schools, their locations and other elements could prove controversial. Such projects frequently involved tearing down homes or businesses, environmental cleanups, and the blocking of streets and other disruptions.

"His duties were to rally community support and elicit community comments regarding schools in a neighborhood," district spokesman Tom Waldman said.

Pina's work did bring him into contact with families, frequently at public meetings organized to hear and address their concerns.

Projects that Pina worked on included a new elementary school in Porter Ranch and a high school serving the west San Fernando Valley, Waldman said. The high school, in particular, generated substantial public debate as a district team and a local charter school competed aggressively for control of the site.

The $19.5-billion building program is winding down, and, as a result, many jobs attached to it have come to an end. Pina's was among them.

The dedication he may have helped organize Saturday was for the Richard N. Slawson Southeast Occupational Center in Bell. Participants told KCET-TV, which first reported Pina's school employment, that he had assisted with community outreach on that project. The adult education and career technical education facility has 29 classrooms as well as health-career labs and child care for students. The school opened in August 2012.

Pina "was slated for some additional temporary work when the issue came to our attention last week and that work was canceled," Deasy said.

It may have been Pina who first alerted district officials that his name appeared in disclosed documents, Deasy said. Pina called a senior administrator in the facilities division. So far, no untoward issues have emerged regarding Pina's work for L.A. Unified.

howard.blume@latimes.com

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Second-generation iPad mini could pack a display with 324 pixels per inch

Apple (AAPL) may be about to make up for delivering a disappointingly low resolution for its first-generation iPad mini display. BrightWire reports that supply chain sources have told Chinese website My Drivers that the next-generation iPad mini will indeed feature a 7.9-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, or 324 pixels per inch. For comparison, consider that the original iPad mini delivered a resolution of just 163 pixels per inch, less than both the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire HD and the Google (GOOG) Nexus 7, which both featured displays with resolutions of 216 pixels per inch. BrightWire’s report also backs up earlier rumors we’ve heard about Apple choosing AU Optronics to make an HD Retina display for its next-generation iPad mini.

[More from BGR: iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak now available for download, compatible with iPhone 5 and iPad mini]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Super Bowl falls short of ratings record

NEW YORK (AP) — With a partial power outage, an overly excited quarterback and a game that suddenly turned from snoozer to sizzler, CBS had its hands full at the Super Bowl. The game fell short of setting a viewership record, but it stands as the third most-watched program in U.S. television history.

The Nielsen Co. said an estimated 108.4 million people watched the Baltimore Ravens' 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. The most-watched events in U.S. TV history were last year's game, seen by 111.3 million, and the 2010 game, with 111 million viewers.

CBS had hoped to make it the fourth year in a row that football's ultimate game broke the record for most-watched event in American television history. But pro football ratings in general have been down slightly this year.

When the Ravens' Jacoby Jones returned the opening kickoff of the second half for a touchdown and gave his team a 28-6 lead, CBS' dream of a ratings record surely became even more distant. And then half the lights went out. CBS' ratings immediately dipped by two full ratings points in the overnight measurement of big cities.

When the lights returned, so did the 49ers. They quickly jumped back in the game and CBS' audience, no doubt fueled by social media chatter, came back, too. CBS was blessed with the dream of every network that telecasts the Super Bowl: a game that isn't decided until the final play.

CBS had a moment of dead air when the field darkened, since power was lost in the control booth where Jim Nantz and Phil Simms worked. After a commercial break, sideline anchor Steve Tasker appeared to say there had been a power outage. CBS then filled time with its football pregame team, showing highlights and speculating on how the delay would affect the teams.

At the precise moment the lights went out, CBS' Armen Keteyian was in the NFL's control booth, conducting an interview with Frank Supovitz, senior vice president of the NFL in charge of events.

"In the NFL control room, there was no panic, but there was an undeniable amount of uncertainty about the cause," Keteyian said Monday on "CBS This Morning." Keteyian was filming for a "60 Minutes Sports" report scheduled to be aired Wednesday on Showtime. CBS News did not participate in live coverage of the power outage.

The power outage was an immediate hot topic for quips and questions online. There were an estimated 47.7 million social media posts during the game, according to the company Trendrr TV, which tracks activity on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. That compares with 17 million during last year's game and 3 million in 2010, Trendrr said.

Baltimore had the highest rating of any individual city, Nielsen said. San Francisco was not among the top 10 cities in ratings.

CBS showcased its freshman drama, "Elementary," to an estimated audience of 20.8 million people after the game. That was markedly down from the 37.6 million who watched "The Voice" on NBC after the 2011 game or the 26.8 million who saw "Glee" on Fox in 2010. CBS noted that the drama did not begin until 11:11 p.m. on the East Coast because of the Superdome power outage.

CBS drew criticism from the Parents Television Council for not editing out a profanity said by Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco shortly after the game. Flacco was caught by microphones describing his team's victory as "f------ awesome."

"No one should be surprised that a jubilant quarterback might use profane language while celebrating a career-defining win, but that is precisely the reason why CBS should have taken some precautions," said Tim Winter, president of the lobbying group, asking for the Federal Communications Commission to rebuke CBS.

The network had no immediate comment Monday on the complaint.

CBS has said it was airing the pregame, postgame and halftime portions of the show on tape delay to guard against the use of bad language or wardrobe malfunctions. The postgame delay does not begin until the first block of commercials after the game, which hadn't happened before Flacco's expletive.

CBS' Craig Ferguson was quick to poke fun at the power outage on his comedy show, which aired after "Elementary." He was shown plugging actress Lucy Liu's cellphone charger into a power outlet at the Superdome, despite instructions not to use it.

"It's one outlet," Ferguson said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

The picture switched to the lights going out in half the dome.

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid

It would change me.

It did.

Something dissolved inside me.

Tears began a slow drip;

I cried at the news story

Of a lost boy found in the woods …

At the surprising beauty

Of a bright leaf falling

Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Lotvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails

of her clothes. The sick woman

peers from under her funny knit cap

to watch each foot swing scuffing forward

and take its turn under her weight.

There is no restlessness or impatience

or anger anywhere in sight. Grace

fills the clean mold of this moment

and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks

For miles each night.

A mantra drives her, I imagine

As my boys’ chant did

The summer of my own illness:

“Push, Mommy, push.”

Urging me to wind my sore feet

Winch-like on a rented bike

To inch us home.

I couldn’t stop;

Couldn’t leave us

Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly

let it fling

let it flip like a pancake in the air

let it sing: what is the song

of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me

Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,

Wondering if you can hear them.

Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.

Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.

Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.

Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

---

Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

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Southern California gasoline prices soar 23 cents in a week

Expect a bit of a shock if you fill up your gas tanks in Southern California this week.

The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the state has jumped 23.4 cents since last Monday, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.

Most of the spike has been driven by the state's southern counties.

PHOTOS: Best car values for fuel economy

Los Angeles and Long Beach, for example, are averaging $4.017 a gallon, up 24.8 cents over the past week.

Orange County gasoline is averaging $4.002 a gallon, up 26.1 cents since last Monday.

The Southern California averages compare to $3.859 a gallon today in San Jose and $3.723 in the region around Modesto.

So, what gives?

"Refinery maintenance," said Denton Cinquegrana, executive editor of the Oil Price Information Service. OPIS collects prices daily from more than 100,000 retail outlets across the U.S. and supplies the AAA with its averages.

"California has a lot more planned refinery maintenance than it usually has at this time of year," Cinquegrana said. "And most of that is concentrated in Southern California."

Cinquegrana added that some of the maintenance was deferred from the fourth quarter of 2012, when refineries kept operating to boost supplies after California prices hit a record average of $4.671 a gallon in October.

The bad timing about all of this is that it also figures to run in to the state's early switch to summer blend gasoline, which starts in March. That is much earlier than most of the rest of the nation.

"It's also the summer blend that is more expensive," Cinquegrana said, "because it can't contain the cheaper, junk additives, like butane" that are used in colder weather, winter blends.

"You could see Southern California prices getting back up to $4.25 by then," he said.

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L.A. County removing metal detectors from some hospital facilities

It was typically chaotic in the emergency room at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center that February day in 1993. Richard May was treating patients in the triage area when a disgruntled man started ranting about the long wait. Then, without warning, the man pulled a gun and started shooting, hitting May in the head, chest and arm and seriously wounding two other doctors.

The carnage, coming after a series of violent incidents, prompted a wave of safety improvements, including the installation of metal detectors at hospital entrances, bulletproof enclosures in emergency rooms and the addition of more security guards.

Now, 20 years after the attack, officials want the metal detectors removed from parts of county hospitals to make them more welcoming to patients in the newly competitive marketplace being created by the Obama administration's healthcare overhaul. The machines in the emergency rooms will remain, but the others are to be taken out by summer. The proposal comes at a time when high-profile shootings have put the nation on edge and prompted emotionally charged debates about the availability of assault weapons and the presence of armed officers in schools.

The county's director of Health Services, Mitchell Katz, says metal detectors stigmatize poor patients and visitors and give the impression that the county facilities are dangerous. Security is paramount, but metal detectors aren't the best way to ensure that, he argues. Most other urban hospitals in L.A. County do not have the machines, relying on guards to provide safety, he said.

"It is a different moment to look and ask ourselves, 'What is the best way to do security?'" Katz said.

But the proposed changes have patients, nurses and doctors worried and are drawing opposition from law enforcement and union members.

May, 67, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, is among those asking administrators to reconsider. He works part-time at the county's Hudson Comprehensive Health Center south of downtown, where he says the metal detector gives patients and staff peace of mind.

"I feel angry, frustrated and resentful," he said of the proposal to remove the devices. "We wouldn't have been shot if they were there then."

Paul Kaszubowski, 64, another doctor shot in 1993, said the bullet shattered his arm and grazed his head. He still suffers problems with his arm and has occasional flashbacks. Removing the metal detectors doesn't make sense, he said. Providing compassionate and high-quality care is the best way to attract and retain patients, he said.

Beginning next year, uninsured patients will be eligible for Medi-Cal coverage and have more options outside of the county's healthcare system. That is driving safety-net hospitals to improve their customer service so they are no longer the providers of last resort.

But that push is running headlong into a record of violence at urban medical facilities, where healthcare workers are often the victims of assault. Hospitals are intrinsically high-risk places, and metal detectors can help prevent violent attacks, said Jane Lipscomb, a University of Maryland professor who has studied hospital safety.

The county's largest public hospital workers' union is trying to stop the removal of the scanners and sent a letter to Katz saying the action is a "huge decision" that could put patients and staff in harm's way.

Longtime County/USC nurse Sabrina Griffin, a union representative, vividly remembers the 1993 shooting and fears something similar could happen again if the screening equipment is removed. She particularly worries about gang retaliation spilling into the hospital after a shooting or stabbing.

"I just feel safer having the scanners," she said.

Sheriff's Department Capt. Chuck Stringham, who oversees security at the county healthcare facilities, said late Friday that the department is opposed to the wholesale removal of the metal detectors without another plan for weapons screening.

County hospitals mirror the crime and violence of surrounding communities, he said, and the scanners serve as the first line of defense — finding guns, knives, box cutters and other weapons.

The county removed the metal detector equipment from the outpatient building at County/USC in July, and no violent incidents have been reported there since doing so, according to the Sheriff's Department. By June 30, the county plans to remove 26 more machines from County/USC, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Olive View Medical Center and the Martin Luther King and Hudson centers.

Patients and visitors entering another County/USC facility last week emptied their pockets of cellphones, keys and wallets before stepping through the scanners. In a period of a few hours, guards confiscated two pocketknives.

Walter Johnson, 59, who had an eye appointment, said removing the machines is "crazy." "How would they know if anyone is coming in with a gun, or an AK-47, or a knife?" he said. "The minute you take these out, you are gonna give some idiot some excuse to do something."

Michelle Mendez, an ER nurse, said metal detectors are needed in the emergency room but not elsewhere. "I think [visitors] would feel more comfortable when visiting their loved ones, knowing we aren't so concerned about violence and crime and weapons," she said.

Tammy Duong, a medical resident in the psychiatric unit, said the machines can be intimidating. But she worries about what might happen without them.

"Just because it is a hospital," she said, "doesn't mean violence can't spill over."

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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BlackBerry searching high and low in India, Indonesia

NEW DELHI/JAKARTA (Reuters) – Research in Motion Ltd must chart a tough course in its two key emerging markets of India and Indonesia: quickly launch cheaper handsets to woo lower-end subscribers while restoring its tattered brand among the countries’ status-conscious.

The company, which is rebranding itself BlackBerry after its best-known smartphone, has won millions of followers in these two Asian countries, mostly by selling cheaper handsets and offering service packages as low as $ 2 a month. So it’s unlikely that the Z10 model introduced last week, which operators in India expect to sell for around $ 750, will appeal to the users it must reach if it is to build market share.

“It’s clear that not only are India and Indonesia among the largest markets but in terms of future smartphone growth, they’re amongst the ones with the most potential,” said Melissa Chau, senior research manager at technology research group IDC in Singapore. “But the two devices that have been launched are not well aligned to the needs of these two markets.”

While the company does not break down its sales by country, data from IDC shows that Indonesia was BlackBerry’s biggest market outside the United States and Britain last year, while India was ninth.

ABI Research said that BlackBerry accounted for nearly half of Indonesia’s smartphone shipments in 2012. Compare this with a global share of just 5.3 percent. In India, the world’s second-largest mobile phone market, BlackBerry ranks third after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Nokia.

In both countries, young people are drawn by low-cost handsets allowing them to communicate for free on the BlackBerry Messaging Service (BBM). Almost all carriers offer services for the device. Indonesia’s XL Axiata Tbk PT, for example, saw a 45 percent jump in BlackBerry subscribers last financial year after offering packages for as little as 20 cents per day.

But this picture is changing rapidly.

The rise of messaging services such as WhatsApp that are not confined to any single operating system and the proliferation of cheap Android devices have diluted the BlackBerry’s appeal.

Mickey Nayoan, a 32-year old product designer in Jakarta, swapped his BlackBerry for a Samsung phone six months ago and isn’t missing it.

“I survived without BlackBerry because there’s WhatsApp,” he said. “More and more people use it and so I don’t need BBM anymore.”

At the same time, higher-end users have deserted what is increasingly seen as a low-end brand.

“When they came up with the cheaper versions, that took the allure off the brand for many Indonesians who are very status-conscious,” said Ong Hock Chuan, a Jakarta-based communications consultant.

ANDROID MAKES INROADS

While BlackBerry remained the number one smartphone brand in Indonesia in the second quarter of last year, the most recent period for which rankings were available, Android overtook it as the most popular operating system, according to IDC.

IDC said when it released the data last September that this was partly because of delays in the launch of the BlackBerry 10. The Z10 is likely to launch in the second half of February in India and in late March in Indonesia.

Data from StatCounter, a website which estimates mobile web traffic, shows BlackBerry’s share in Indonesia falling from about 20 percent in 2011 to about 5 percent last year.

On the other hand, carriers and users say, glitches with BlackBerry services and a perception that the brand has lost some of its luster mean that it will be hard to sell the Z10 and a keyboard model, the Q10, even to better-off users.

“It really depends on how BlackBerry 10 performs. If it can fix problems of previous BlackBerry (services) it could succeed in the market,” said Hasnul Suhaimi, CEO of Indonesia’s XL Axiata. But for now, he said, “it will just be about people swapping out existing devices.”

To reverse this, BlackBerry must announce cheaper devices quickly, analysts say. BlackBerry launched handsets designed on its old platform for just such users in India and Indonesia last year.

“The Z10… is obviously a high-end product and India is not a market at that price point,” said Anshul Gupta, an industry analyst at technology advisory firm Gartner in Mumbai. “We don’t know exactly what will be coming here, but I would expect them to launch different models in India which would give them more traction.”

(Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Mumbai and Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Writing by Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Emily Kaiser)

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In Super Bowl broadcast, CBS hopes for history

NEW YORK (AP) — Ratings glory hangs in the balance for CBS's broadcast of the Super Bowl.

Three years running, the NFL's championship game has set a viewership record, topped last year by NBC's broadcast to an average audience of 111.3 million people.

But ratings are a mere point of pride for CBS heading into kickoff. The ads have already been sold (some at more than $4 million a pop), so the network can now only hope to put forth its best broadcast and deflect as much of the Super Bowl glow to its other programs and its cable sports network.

After an afternoon of pregame programming, Jim Nantz and Phil Simms will call the game while more than 60 cameras cover the action — with at least one keeping an eye on the Harbaugh parents.

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Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.

VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.

Matt Eich for The New York Times

MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC Dominion Psychiatric Associates in Virginia Beach, where Richard Fee was treated by Dr. Waldo M. Ellison. After observing Richard and hearing his complaints about concentration, Dr. Ellison diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed the stimulant Adderall.

It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”

It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.

The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.

Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.

Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.

Very few people who misuse stimulants devolve into psychotic or suicidal addicts. But even one of Richard’s own physicians, Dr. Charles Parker, characterized his case as a virtual textbook for ways that A.D.H.D. practices can fail patients, particularly young adults. “We have a significant travesty being done in this country with how the diagnosis is being made and the meds are being administered,” said Dr. Parker, a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach. “I think it’s an abnegation of trust. The public needs to say this is totally unacceptable and walk out.”

Young adults are by far the fastest-growing segment of people taking A.D.H.D medications. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before, according to the data company I.M.S. Health. While this rise is generally attributed to the maturing of adolescents who have A.D.H.D. into young adults — combined with a greater recognition of adult A.D.H.D. in general — many experts caution that savvy college graduates, freed of parental oversight, can legally and easily obtain stimulant prescriptions from obliging doctors.

“Any step along the way, someone could have helped him — they were just handing out drugs,” said Richard’s father. Emphasizing that he had no intention of bringing legal action against any of the doctors involved, Mr. Fee said: “People have to know that kids are out there getting these drugs and getting addicted to them. And doctors are helping them do it.”

“...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, daydreamed and got A’s. he has been an A-B student until mid college when he became scattered and he wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a timely manner.”

Dr. Waldo M. Ellison

Richard Fee initial evaluation

Feb. 5, 2010

Richard began acting strangely soon after moving back home in late 2009, his parents said. He stayed up for days at a time, went from gregarious to grumpy and back, and scrawled compulsively in notebooks. His father, while trying to add Richard to his health insurance policy, learned that he was taking Vyvanse for A.D.H.D.

Richard explained to him that he had been having trouble concentrating while studying for medical school entrance exams the previous year and that he had seen a doctor and received a diagnosis. His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from nursery school through high school, when he was awarded a full academic scholarship to Greensboro College in North Carolina. Mr. Fee also expressed concerns about the safety of his son’s taking daily amphetamines for a condition he might not have.

“The doctor wouldn’t give me anything that’s bad for me,” Mr. Fee recalled his son saying that day. “I’m not buying it on the street corner.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 3, 2013

An earlier version of a quote appearing with the home page presentation of this article misspelled the name of a medication. It is Adderall, not Aderall.

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