Judge Says Suit to Keep State Hospital Open Lacks Specifics

Saying that a lawsuit seeking to halt the closure of Camarillo State Hospital is too vague, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge Thursday refused to block the shutdown for now, but gave hospital advocates until mid-May to prove that such an action is necessary.

In issuing her ruling, Judge Diane Wayne said that the lawsuit lacked specific examples of how clients would suffer if the state carried out plans to transfer them to other facilities and close the hospital by June 30.

The suit--filed last month in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of family members of patients--alleges that the closure would violate state and federal law and would cause irreparable harm to the hospital’s 650 clients by tearing them away from their home and pulling them away from relatives, many of whom live nearby.

“I need specific facts, not a general statement . . . that it would have been better if they had not closed the facility,” Wayne told Calabasas attorney Ron Gold, who filed the legal challenge on behalf of family members.

“If I felt the people there were not going to be given adequate care . . . I wouldn’t hesitate keeping the hospital open” until those issues could be resolved, Wayne added.

The decision was a setback for dozens of parents, who crowded into the courtroom Thursday morning hoping Wayne would issue a temporary order halting the closure and all patient transfers until larger issues raised in the lawsuit--such as whether the closure violates state law--could be settled.

It was also a setback for California State University officials, who have suspended efforts to convert the mental hospital into a four-year university until the lawsuit is resolved.

Handel Evans, president of the developing Cal State University Channel Islands, had initially said that the legal challenge would have no effect on efforts to transform the hospital into Ventura County’s first public university.

But earlier this week, Evans announced that he would no longer be making public presentations on the conversion plan or seeking to contract with business partners interested in sharing space at the university.

“Nobody is going to make any sort of formal agreements while this lawsuit is in the air,” Evans said. “Nobody wants to come anywhere close to us. Right now it’s back in limbo until this issue is settled.”

At the earliest, the issue won’t be settled until May 14, when attorneys reconvene to argue the merits of a lawsuit that many mental health advocates view as their last, best chance to spare the 60-year-old institution from closure.

With patients scheduled to begin transferring to other facilities later this month, officials with the state Department of Developmental Services--for now the sole defendant in the lawsuit--agreed Thursday to delay the transfer of any patient who requests it until the injunction request is settled.

Patients, or their guardians, have until the end of the day next Wednesday to request a delay.

“The department has been going through great lengths in this whole process to accommodate everyone involved,” said Richard T. Waldow, a deputy attorney general assigned to represent the state agency.

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

Filed by the Greenline Parents Group and Family and Advocates of the Mentally Ill, the lawsuit contends 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.

The legal challenge leans heavily on expert opinion and the impassioned testimony of family members to bolster the argument that the closure would harm patients and perhaps reverse any progress they have made at the state facility.

But Wayne said Thursday the lawsuit generated more questions than answers.

She wanted to know why the Department of Mental Health was not a defendant in the suit, since it has jurisdiction over the approximately 250 mentally ill patients at Camarillo State.

And she wanted to know what support there was for allegations that state officials had fallen down in their responsibilities to plan for the continued care of the hospital patients at other facilities.

“It seems like they are in fact doing a great deal,” Wayne said. “I don’t really have any facts that suggest there are problems.”

Attorney Gold said Thursday that the Department of Mental Health would be added as a defendant in the lawsuit.

And family members said that although individual patients are not named in the suit, they can provide plenty of evidence that the shutdown would be harmful.

“This closure is going to cause a lot of people a lot of hardship, and I don’t know why that’s not a persuasive argument,” said John Chase, spokesman for the nonprofit Greenline group. “But if what she wants are declarations from family members, then we’ll give her 300 of them.”

Win or lose next month, Gold said the larger issues raised in the lawsuit will still go to trial--perhaps six to eight months down the road--even if the hospital is empty and the patients are gone.

In the meantime, Cal State officials say they don’t know at what stage of this legal battle they will resume planning the university campus. If the court order is denied next month, Evans said, that process could restart.

Jim Considine, a CSU trustee and chairman of the committee evaluating the Camarillo State Hospital site, said the university’s holding pattern should come as no surprise.

“We just don’t have the money to throw at the wall,” he said.

“I really and truly understand how the families are feeling for these patients,” he said. “This is going to be a very traumatic upheaval. That’s why we don’t want to get in on the front side of this decision.”

If the going proves to be too tough, he said, university officials will simply turn their attention to the 275-acre lemon orchard CSU owns near the Camarillo Youth Authority on Central Avenue.

Despite the litigation, county planners say they will continue analyzing the traffic impacts that the conversion of the hospital grounds would pose on surrounding roads.

The analysis is tied to an environmental review being conducted for a proposed 320-acre Camarillo regional park adjacent to the hospital site. The project includes an 18-hole golf course and an outdoor amphitheater.

“We’re still moving ahead,” said Bob Amore, lease development manager for the county parks department. “We started this project long before the university ever said it would go in there.”

If the conversion doesn’t go through, he said, “it just means that the traffic isn’t going to be there.”

However, officials with the Pleasant Valley Unified School District said plans to construct a kindergarten through eighth-grade magnet school on the hospital grounds have been put on hold until the litigation is resolved.

Alvarez is a Times staff writer and Warchol is a correspondent.