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[T]he family of a man beaten by a former Brattleboro Retreat patient took their case to the Vermont Supreme Court this week.
Michael Kuligoski’s family sued the Retreat last year, asserting that the southern Vermont mental health hospital was negligent in releasing a patient with a schizophrenia diagnosis in 2010. The patient, Evan Rapoza, later assaulted Kuligoski, a furnace technician, while he was working at a property owned by Rapoza’s family, beating him with a wrench, strangling him, and attempting to drown him, in 2011.
According to court papers filed last year, Kuligoski will need medical attention for the rest of his life as a result of the injuries.
A Windham County Superior Court judge heard the case last summer and came down on the side of the Retreat, which argued for the case to be dismissed.
Richard Cassidy, the attorney representing Kuligoski’s family, said the family appealed the decision shortly after the judge dismissed the case in late September.
“It’s a narrow issue but it’s an important one,” Cassidy said after Tuesday’s Supreme Court hearing.
The Brattleboro Retreat had provided inpatient treatment for Rapoza for two months in 2010. A psychologist treating Rapoza noted on the day of his discharge that his “refusal of medications is very worrisome,” VTDigger reported last summer.
Kuligoski’s family alleges Rapoza had expressed homicidal and suicidal thoughts and exhibited violent behavior while an inpatient in the center’s care, according to the original complaint.
The Brattleboro Retreat, however, made a motion to dismiss, arguing that the complaint failed to make a valid legal argument. Rapoza was not an involuntary patient — a status that is granted by a judge’s order and under which individuals are considered to be in state custody and can have court-ordered discharge plans.
In its motion to dismiss last year, the Retreat argued that if the court sided with the Kuligoski family, mental health workers would need to practice “defensive medicine,” keeping patients longer than necessary.
“I don’t know whether this case is typical or an exception, but what I do know is that I don’t think the mental health needs of the young man who attacked my client were attended to,” Cassidy said, “and that’s a terrible thing.”
Criminal charges against Rapoza were dropped after he was found to be clinically insane at the time of the attack.
The suit also named Northeast Kingdom Human Services, an agency where Rapoza was a client. The lawsuit claims that Rapoza’s mother told the agency that her son had stopped taking his medication in December 2010 and that nobody from the agency reached out to Rapoza in the more than two months between then and the attack.
A spokesperson for the Brattleboro Retreat refused to speak about the case.
“Since the matter is before the Court, it would be inappropriate to comment at this time,” Retreat spokesman Jeff Kelliher said in a statement Wednesday.
D.W. Bouchard of Northeast Kingdom Human Services said that he could not say much about the case while it is in court. He called the case “regrettable.”
The Supreme Court will now decide whether to uphold the Windham County Superior Court ruling to dismiss the case. Bouchard said that they expect a decision in about half a year.
This article was updated on May 28.