Ruling Ends Effort to Keep Hospital Open

As Camarillo State Hospital officially shut its doors Monday, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge effectively ended the last effort to keep the hospital open.

During an early morning hearing, Judge Diane Wayne ruled that state officials had complied with her order to assure that certain patients would not be harmed by being transferred to other facilities.

In mid-May, Wayne decreed that the mental hospital would stay open until the state could ensure that those patients would receive comparable care at other facilities.

That temporary order stemmed from a lawsuit filed earlier this year on behalf of Camarillo patients seeking to spare the hospital from closure.

State officials returned to court Monday to show they had complied with Wayne’s order.

“Basically the compliance was a moot situation because the families had already agreed to the transfers,” said Deputy State Atty. Y. Tammy Chung.

Ron Gold, the Calabasas attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of parents of Camarillo patients, could not be reached for comment.

In a related matter, Chung said the investigation into the death of former Camarillo State patient Craig Black concluded that he died of natural causes.

Black, 54, collapsed Memorial Day at a Long Beach facility. He was later taken to Lakewood Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Black had been a Camarillo patient for about a decade but was moved in February to the Long Beach psychiatric treatment program as part of the state hospital’s closure.

“A coroner’s report said that he died of a heart attack, so the judge decided to let the issue go,” Chung said.