Lawsuit Over Adult Home
The New York Times - CLIFFORD J. LEVY

12/17/02 - The New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, sued the former operators of one of the state's largest and most troubled adult homes for the mentally ill yesterday, seeking $12 million in damages to compensate hundreds of residents who had been subjected to what state lawyers described as years of scandalous care and deplorable conditions.

The former operators were accused of repeatedly engaging in "illegal, fraudulent and deceptive" conduct that endangered the psychiatric patients entrusted by the state to the home, Seaport Manor, in Canarsie, Brooklyn. The lawsuit charges that the home routinely neglected residents who were in crisis, distributed psychotropic medication haphazardly or not at all, allowed rooms to become infested with vermin, and misappropriated money.

All the while, the former operators siphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from Seaport, and paid its administrator, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit, as much as $180,000 a year in salary, and $250,000 in retirement benefits, according to court papers.

The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, is a milestone in the oversight of New York's adult homes, which have long been so loosely regulated that they have often faced only modest penalties even after state inspectors cited them for grievous violations. The homes were once considered promising alternatives to the grim psychiatric wards that the state began closing in the 1960's, but have instead come to be seen by mental-health experts as little more than sprawling flophouses that keep the mentally ill isolated from society.

The new threat of serious financial penalties for operators of the homes, which now shelter 15,000 mentally ill people in New York, is intended to send a message that dangerous problems will no longer be tolerated, officials said.

The $12 million in damages demanded by the attorney general is roughly the amount that Seaport residents paid the home between December 1998 and June 2002, money that was drawn mostly from their disability checks. If the operators lose the lawsuit, it would most likely be up to a judge to determine the size of the restitution fund, and how much should be returned to the residents.

"This was a failure of government that it took this long to respond, and we are now going to step into this void," Mr. Spitzer said in an interview. "I certainly hope that this demonstrates to the industry that there is going to be renewed vigor in terms of enforcement."

He added that his office would aggressively pursue similar cases against other adult homes.

Mr. Spitzer's office began investigating Seaport after the home was the focus of an article in The New York Times last spring that appeared as part of a series detailing widespread failings in the adult homes system. The article described how from 1995 through 2001, at least 79 Seaport residents died, or roughly one every month, including at least three who committed suicide and two others whose bodies were discovered decomposing. The average age of death was 58, and in almost every case the state never investigated the circumstances of the deaths.

After having done little to punish Seaport's operators, the Pataki administration responded to the investigation by The Times by moving to revoke their license, and the home, which once had 346 beds, is now nearly closed. Only a few residents remain, and they will soon be transferred elsewhere.

The administration also subsequently put together a reform panel, which issued a plan last month to largely do away with the adult homes system over the next decade. In addition to the lawsuit brought yesterday, the United States attorney's office in Manhattan is conducting a criminal investigation into Seaport.

Seaport's operators — Baruch Mappa, Martin Rosenberg and Emil Klein did not respond to three messages left with their lawyers yesterday. Nor did the former administrator, Esther Elizabeth Rosenberg, who is Mr. Rosenberg's daughter, and her son-in-law, Seth Fried, who was assistant administrator and was also named in the lawsuit.

Asked for her reaction to the lawsuit, Lisa Newcomb, executive director of the Empire State Association of Adult Homes and Assisted Living Facilities, said: "Egregious violators of the law should be punished appropriately. However, we know that they are few and far between."

Situated in a five-story brick building at 615 East 104th Street, Seaport was opened in 1975 by the operators to take advantage of the rapid emptying of the state psychiatric system. The home became almost an arm of the nearby Kingsboro Psychiatric Center, and over the years took in hundreds, if not thousands, of Kingsboro patients. (By last year, the home had become larger than Kingsboro, housing one of the largest concentrations of mentally ill people in the state.)

Yet while it immediately assumed an important role in the mental-health network, Seaport became notorious for mismanagement and poor conditions.

For years it was plagued by drug dealing, prostitution and violence. In a 1997 study, the State Office of Mental Health even referred to the home as "The New Warehouse for the Insane." Still, the Pataki administration, like its predecessors, allowed it to stay open.

While it generally does not discuss deaths of Seaport residents, the attorney general's lawsuit uses state inspection reports and interviews with officials, residents and others to paint a dispiriting portrait of life inside the home. It describes, for example, how residents complained of "garbage in the halls, broken furniture, and malodorous conditions in the facility."

One inspection report referred to "layers of mouse droppings, cockroaches, flies and fleas in some resident bedrooms and/or bathrooms," says the lawsuit, filed in conjunction with the State Department of Health, which regulates the adult homes. And the court papers also detail how Seaport would promote itself to potential new residents as having "No. 1 Status" among the state's adult homes.

Advocates for adult home residents, who have long criticized Albany for failing to punish adult homes like Seaport, were heartened by the lawsuit.

"I'm pleased that residents gain a chance at compensation for the many years of neglect by the operators and the inaction by state agencies," said George Gitlitz of the Coalition of Institutionalized Aged and Disabled. But he added that state officials who he said had looked the other way for too long should also be held accountable.

Seaport residents, many of whom were transferred to other homes with records that are nearly as bad, said they hoped the lawsuit might pressure other operators to make improvements.

"This is fantastic," said Karen Burkoff, 52, who was a resident of the home for six years and served as vice president of the residents' council. "For the first time, they are doing something besides giving them a slap on their wrist."

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