Suit Seeks to Keep Mental Hospital Open

With the closure of Camarillo State Hospital only three months away, advocates for the institution have filed a lawsuit in an effort to block the shutdown and prevent the hospital’s nearly 700 patients from being funneled to other facilities starting next month.

The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of family members of patients, alleges that the closure would violate state law and harm the hospital’s mentally ill and developmentally disabled clients, many of whom have lived there for years or even decades.

With time running out on the 60-year-old institution, the lawsuit seeks a temporary court order immediately halting the closure and all patient transfers until a hearing can be held on those and other issues.

“We can’t afford to wait any longer, there will be nobody left,” said Ronald Gold, the Calabasas attorney representing the hospital advocates. “Hopefully the outcome of a trial would be a finding that the needs of these patients are not being met.”

Officials with the state Department of Developmental Services--for now, the sole defendant in the lawsuit--said they had not had a good opportunity to review the case, but strongly disagree with the allegations.

Michael Mount, chief counsel for the state agency, noted that the closure process has been highly publicized and ongoing for months, giving advocates ample opportunity to voice their concerns.

Moreover, the issue has nothing to do with the denial of services to any client, but centers on the narrow argument of where those services will be provided.

A hearing has been scheduled for this morning on the matter.

The legal challenge has been in the works since shortly after Gov. Pete Wilson in January 1996 ordered the closure of the psychiatric hospital, citing its rising costs and dwindling patient population.

Patients are scheduled to start transferring to other state institutions late next month, with the entire facility expected to empty out by June 30.

To decide what should become of the property, Wilson appointed a task force of state and local leaders who eventually agreed that a four-year university campus would be the best possible use of the hospital’s 85 buildings, scattered across 700 acres south of Camarillo.

Since then, Cal State officials have been drawing up a conversion plan, including the unveiling last week of a preliminary blueprint for the developing Cal State University Channel Islands.

Handel Evans, president of the local campus, said the lawsuit will not have any effect on efforts underway to map out Ventura County’s first public university.

“The creation of a university and the closure of the hospital are two separate issues,” Evans said. “We will continue along . . . to see if we can use the site regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit.”

Filed by the Greenline Parents Group and Family and Advocates of the Mentally Ill, the lawsuit alleges that the hospital closure would violate provisions in the Welfare and Institutions Code that require the state “to prevent the dislocation of persons with developmental disabilities from their home communities.”

Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that the closure would violate the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires public entities to “administer services, programs and activities in the most integrated setting appropriate” to people with disabilities.

Without a court order to halt the closure, the lawsuit alleges that patients will suffer irreparable harm. And once the hospital is closed, the lawsuit says, it would require lengthy and expensive litigation to reopen the facility.

In court papers supporting the action, advocates and mental health experts drove home those arguments.

Dr. Robert P. Liberman, a UCLA professor of psychiatry who for more than two decades headed the hospital’s world-renowned research unit, argued that the hospital should be spared from closure because of the treatment breakthroughs pioneered at Camarillo.

“Once closed, this irreplaceable state resource, with its staffing, infrastructure and programs, can never be rebuilt,” Liberman wrote. “We believe it would be a real travesty to close Camarillo, an error in state planning that will have adverse consequences for decades to come.”