Thomas Breen file photo
Retreat's now-closed 915 Ella T. Grasso location.
Patient records, narcotics, and piles of mail allegedly remained inside a drug rehab center on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard a month after the facility abruptly closed — and were all accessible to anyone able to push through the shuttered complex’s back door.
That’s according to a four-page affidavit filed in state court on July 25 in just the latest foreclosure case involving Retreat Behavioral Health.
This lawsuit — the first to be filed in Connecticut since Retreat’s implosion on June 21 amid a trainwreck of executive suicides, corporate debt, mass layoffs, and the sudden discharge of all patients — stems from efforts to collect on debt. Arba Credit Investors II LP is trying to foreclose on several multi-million-dollar loans issued to the Retreat-affiliated accompany that owns 915 Ella T. Grasso Blvd., Coal New Haven LLC.
A similar foreclosure lawsuit involving a different lender and a different Retreat affiliate is currently making its way through court in Palm Beach County, Florida, where the national for-profit rehab company was headquartered.
The affidavit in question was written by Ian Lagowitz, whom state Superior Court Judge Walter Spader, Jr. appointed on July 19 via an ex parte order to serve as “receiver” for the Ella T. Grasso Boulevard property.
Lagowitz’s court-empowered responsibilities include securing and protecting the defunct Retreat property as the foreclosure case makes its way through court.
On July 23, Coal New Haven LLC and the lawsuit’s other defendants, including David Silberstein, who served as the financial backer for the three-state Retreat operation, filed an “expedited motion to vacate.” It seeks to overturn Lagowitz’s appointment as receiver on the grounds that the court’s order violated the defendants’ constitutional rights to due process and constituted a deprivation of property rights.
Lagowitz submitted his July 25 affidavit in conjunction with the plaintiff’s filing of an objection to that motion to vacate.
In the affidavit, Lagowitz wrote that an unnamed representative of his conducted an investigation of the Retreat property at 915 Ella T. Grasso on July 23.
That representative found the property “was not secure and easily gained access by pushing open a back door.”
Lagowitz’s July 25 affidavit continued:
There is currently no security or alarm system in operation at the Mortgaged Premises.
There were keys, including keys to cabinets containing narcotics, strewn about the building.
There were piles of mail and packages addressed to Coal New Haven, LLC and NR Connecticut LLC lying on the floor and in doorways, unopened.
There were also patient files, personal belongings, food, and clothing items throughout the building and computers that remained on.
It is clear from the lack of security at the Mortgaged Premises that anyone could have gained access, thereby gaining access to prescription medications, narcotics, patient records, and patient belongings.
Lagowitz wrote that his representative subsequently “secured” the property and posted notices on the front entrance with directions on how the defendants could gain access as needed.
In a July 25 objection to the defendants’ expedited motion to vacate the receivership appointment order, Arba Credit Investors’ lawyer, Kevin McEleney, leaned on Lagowitz’s affidavit as providing evidence for why the court’s initial ex parte order was appropriate.
“The abrupt closure of the operating business, the suicides of two officers of NR CT on the heels of the closure, the failure of any Defendant to secure the premises and implement sufficient safeguards over the narcotics stored therein, patient records and lab samples, and the existence of hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid real estate taxes all constitute the types of waste and mismanagement that the Act was intended to address,” McEleney wrote.
He continued: “The careless disregard for Plaintiff’s collateral, highly sensitive patient information, and controlled substances demonstrates a level of mismanagement and waste that are appropriately addressed by the appointment of the Receiver.”
Last Monday, the defense’s attorney, Richard P. Weinstein, filed a seven-page reply to the plaintiff’s objection to the expedited motion to vacate.
In that reply, he dismissed Lagowitz’s affidavit as “nothing more than hearsay on top of hearsay. It is not admissible on its face.”
He added that the plaintiff “has no evidence as to whether the defendants had a representative observing the premises and making sure that it was locked. Just as in an evidentiary hearing the court would become aware of the fact that the narcotics were removed from the premises.” And on Aug. 1, Winstein and his clients appealed the judge’s ex parte receivership appointment to the state’s appellate court.
In a follow-up phone call on Monday, Weinstein stressed that the property “was not open to trespass.” Instead, he said, the receiver’s unnamed representative appeared to force their way into the building. Weinstein also emphasized that “there were no narcotics” on site.
This foreclosure case is next scheduled to have a hearing in state court on Friday.
Previous coverage:
• Drug Rehab Workers Seek Back Pay
• Drug Rehab Workers Seek New Jobs
• Retreat Owes City $230K & Climbing; Deeper Financial Chaos Revealed
• 2nd Drug Rehab Exec Dies; Employees, Patients Left Scrambling For Answers
• Drug Rehab Center Closes 2nd Site
• Drug Rehab Center Shuts Down