D.C. Council Opposes $2.4M Bill Against Blind Patient

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At-large) is leading a legislative showdown by 11 of the 13 Council members against Mayor Adrian Fenty's attempts to charge a $2.4 million hospital bill against a mentally ill man who gouged out his own eyes at St. Elizabeths Hospital, the District-run mental health facility. A bill introduced today called the “Frank Harris Jr. Offset Justice Act of 2007” would require that the District not charge for the care of an indigent person acquitted solely on the grounds of insanity in cases where the District has been found negligent in providing care, Mendelson's office reported.

Harris, a schizophrenic patient who was involuntarily committed in the 1970s, gouged out his eyes at St. Elizabeths in 2003 even though he was supposed to be under constant one-on-one supervision and in four-point restraints. After his legal guardian, Janice Motley, filed a $10 million lawsuit against the District in 2004, the D.C. Attorney General's Office countered that Motley would have to pay a $2.4 million bill for Harris' care from any judgment won against the District in the suit.

In 2002, the District affirmed that the filing of set-off claims, in cases similar to Harris' case, was not good public policy after a protest by every Council member, including Fenty when he represented Ward 4. Fenty apparently has switched his position on the issue after becoming mayor this year. For more on the case, see this previous BLT post.

"On the one hand, it is heartening to see my colleagues on the Council see the offensive nature of the District billing for negligent care,” Mendelson stated today. “But on the other hand, I am disappointed that precedent has not been followed at the outset, and we had to resort to a legislative fix."