Al Katz, a Holocaust survivor Part 1 and Part 2

Al Katz, a Holocaust survivor and his new Florida Holocaust

http://www.redcounty.com/content/al-katz-%E2%80%93-story-holocaust-survivor#comment-60131


This is the first in a series of investigative columns that will tell the story of Al Katz, a Holocaust survivor.

Why should you be interested? If you or a loved one is a senior citizen, living in Florida either full time or part time, this story applies to you.

Al Katz had his liberty and property taken from him by National Socialist Germany in 1940. They tried to take his life, but he survived. Fast forward seventy years to 2010, and Al Katz had his liberty and property taken from him a second time. This time, however, the state in which this all happened is Florida.

During the Holocaust, Al helped to save innumerable lives by secretly distributing scraps of food to starving slaves along the train route he drove. After the Holocaust, Al delivered his memories to thousands of students in Manatee County and other southwest Florida schools. He was a true Holocaust hero to those he saved and the generations after them.

This story is a written in his memory and is a warning to all those who live in Florida and beyond. How can I say this? Because the September 2010 Report to the Chairman, Special Committee on Aging, U.S. Senate says so. The report is titled Guardianships: Cases of Financial Exploitation, Neglect, and Abuse of Seniors, GAO-10-1046, which reads in part:

“Most of the allegations we [the GAO] identified involved financial exploitation and misappropriation of assets. Specifically, the allegations point to guardians taking advantage of wards by engaging in schemes that financially benefit the guardian but are financially detrimental to the ward under their care. Also, the allegations underscore that the victim’s family members often lose their inheritance or are excluded by the guardian from decisions affecting their relative’s care.”

And who is involved in the “financial exploitation and misappropriation of assets” in Al Katz’s case? The Florida Department of Elder Affairs, the Florida judicial system and the lawyers and professional guardians appointed by the state.

Al’s story stretches over several years and involves people in Indiana, Washington, D.C., and Manatee County, Florida. It involves Al’s son who is Vice President and the Treasurer of The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., to Edwin Boyer, a Florida attorney and the current President of the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys, and Gerald F. O’Brien, Esq. It involves a loving daughter, a disinterested son and a group of lawyers, judges and professional guardians in Manatee County who helped take away Al Katz’s liberty and property.

Al Katz died on July 11, 2010, and the judges, lawyers and professional guardian are still picking on the bones of Al’s estate to make sure they are kept whole while his family pays his bills.

This is a story about a family that, as the GAO found, was excluded, in whole or in part, by the Florida Department of Elder Affairs guardian and Twelfth Circuit Court from decisions affecting their father’s well being and inheritance.

It is a frightening story about how a simple “emergency” turned into a grab for the control of Al’s life. The story culminates in the Circuit Court for Manatee County, Florida, Probate Division, in the case RE: Guardianship of Al Katz (File No. 2009 GA 1171).

This case involves Dr. Beverly R. Newman, Ed.D, the daughter of Al Katz, Florida Attorney Edwin Boyer and Florida Professional Guardians Ashley Butler and Herbert Schimmel. Ashley Butler was Al Katz’s public guardian from September 18 to November 23, 2009. Herbert Schimmel was Al’s professional guardian of the property from November 24, 2009 until his death.

Al Katz’s case was reported in the Bradenton Herald in 2009 when Beverly was finally given guardianship of her father, but not his property. I am picking up the story from there.

The Bradenton Herald reported, “[Beverly] Newman and her husband, Lawrence T. Newman, had petitioned the [Manatee] court for control of Katz’s health care decision-making since Sept. 18 [2009], when Bradenton’s Aging Safely was awarded emergency temporary guardianship after Katz was taken to the hospital with “confusion, agitation and bronchitis,” according to court documents.” [My emphasis]

This was the “emergency” that triggered the state of Florida taking control of Al’s life, liberty and property. Something every Florida senior citizen is potentially subject to.

According to Beverly Newman the “confusion, agitation and bronchitis” may have been caused by her father being over medicated which led to his having flashbacks of his experiences during the Holocaust.

I will stop here and ask that you bear with me as I tell the story of struggle of Beverly to take back her father’s life, liberty and property from the state in my next column.



Part Two

http://redcounty.com/content/al-katz-story-holocaust-survivor-part-2

This is the second of a series of columns about how Al Katz, a Holocaust survivor and senior citizen, lost his property and freedom to the State of Florida. To read the first please go here.

I call this column “The Road to Perdition”.As the saying goes, the road to perdition is paved with good intentions. Well, in Al Katz’s case the road is filled with massive pot holes of bad if not dangerous government policy.

The story begins on December 11, 2008, when Al Katz is put into a Bradenton nursing home against his will by his girlfriend. Upon hearing of this, his daughter Beverly Newman on December 15th legally files for guardianship of her father in Indiana because her father always stated that he did not want to be placed in a nursing home. Up until that time Beverly and her husband Larry had been Al’s sole familial caretakers through numerous medical crises since 2002.

From December 2008 through August 2009, Beverly constantly contacts her brother Louis H. Katz, Executive Vice President and Treasurer of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who has Power of Attorney for their father to help Beverly get him back home to Indianapolis, where he had been domiciled since 1946.

In the interim, Al Katz is repeatedly hospitalized by a Dr. James Hanusa. Unbeknown to Beverly, Dr. Hanusa contacts Louis to give guardianship of his father to Ashley Butler, Public Guardian of Manatee, Sarasota, and DeSoto Counties. This is done even though Al (a) is not indigent; (b) has his daughter ready to care for him; and (c) has never been domiciled in Florida, all 3 of which are mandatory before placement in public guardianship.

In September 2009, Al was hospitalized with breathing problems. Inexplicably, Dr. James Hanusa orders that no information about Al be given to his daughter Beverly.

On September 17, 2009, Beverly Newman receives a phone call from an anonymous third party that someone is trying to improperly put her father into guardianship in Florida, but no details are given. Beverly immediately tries to contact her brother to find out what is happening to their father, but Louis refuses to reply to all telephone calls, e-mails, and faxes. Finally in desperation, Beverly searches the Internet for the names of guardians in Bradenton and calls the offices of Ashley Butler and Jo Eisch of Aging Safely, Inc.,and their attorney. Beverly leaves a message, in case Ashley might know anything about her father’s guardianship. Ashley Butler never returns Beverly’s call, and proceeds to complete the guardianship in what appears to be a violation of Florida law.

Without ever listing Beverly on court documents as next-of-kin and without notifying Beverly, who is in Indianapolis, of the guardianship hearing scheduled for the very next day, September 18, 2009, Ashley Butler is given guardianship of Al Katz.

Immediately, Ms. Butler attaches all of Al’s assets (bank accounts, Social Security, Holocaust reparations), changes the locks to his house, and takes boxes of legal documents, jewelry, financial data, and valuables from the home, while keeping Mr. Katz in a nursing home against his oral and written wishes.

After the guardianship is granted, Al Katz’s former attorney tells Beverly that Ashley Butler has guardianship of her father in Bradenton.

Concerned about her father’s physical well-being, Beverly and her husband Larry on September 20, 2009, drive from Indianapolis to Bradenton overnight. They arrive on September 21st and visit Al, who is in Manatee Memorial Hospital. He is visibly thrilled to see them.

Al Katz is released on September 24th by his three physicians to return to his Bradenton home with his daughter Beverly and her husband. Immediately, Ashley Butler, the Public Guardian, demands that Mr. Katz be put into the hospital’s lock-down psychiatric unit. Mr. Katz, against the wishes of the family, is put into the lock-down unit using the Baker Act. To make matters worse for Al and his family, a psychiatrist, Dr. David Panting, places a no-contact order on Mr. Katz, who is now isolated from all his family and friends.

Despite the Baker Act’s 72-hour limit, Mr. Katz is kept in the hospital’s lockdown unit for three weeks, under the no-contact order. Finally, on October 12th. Al Katz is released from hospital lock-down, and is immediately put into lock-down in the Casa Mora nursing home, still under the no-contact order.

After two days of court hearings, Beverly Newman is finally granted three hours of visitation per day with her Father.

On October 20, 2009, it appears Ashley Butler may have illegally permitted Jackie Steuerwald, Mr. Katz’s designated Healthcare Representative, to make medical decisions for Al Katz, even though Mr. Katz never granted healthcare decision-making powers to Steuerwald. Steuerwald then, without proper authority, hires Eric Jason, a Florida professional guardian, as Mr. Katz’s “care manager.” On their Agreement for Services, the signature of Al Katz, who has been a ward for one month and therefore prohibited from signing legal documents, appears to have been forged. Mr. Jason thereafter illegally makes all medical decisions for Mr. Katz and obtains Mr. Katz’s confidential medical information from Blake Hospital, various doctors, Casa Mora nursing home, and First in Care home health services.

In an effort to bring her father back to his loving family and remove the government's Draconian control over him, Beverly files a series of motions: a Motion to Vacate Guardianship, a Motion for Order Prohibiting Medical Decisions and an Objection to Fees.

Do you see the pattern and understand how a state like Florida and its guardianship system can keep a family at bay while making life-and-death decisions of questionable legal authority?


The next chapter in the story of Al Katz – Holocaust survivor - will take you through the court system and lawyers who picked his estate dry, while he was dying
 
Editor's Note: Visit a courtroom on the 18th floor of the Daley Courthouse and view this monstrous plot taking place every day in the Probate Court of Cook County.

Editor's note: Alice R. Gore Estate value about 1 million dollars: Alice R. Gore, deceased, a disabled 99 year old ward of the Probate Court of Cook County, Judge Kawamoto’s courtroom was hours away from ending up in the Cook County Morgue. Alice's estate was depleted by probate court parasites and there were reportedly no funds to bury her. Her loving family paid for the burial expenses so that Alice would not have to suffer the indignity of being stacked like an Auschwitz inmate in the Cook County morgue. The judge allowed an easily manipulated mentally disabled granddaughter to be appointed as Alice’s guardian and yet no sanctions were instituted against the judge or court officers for this blatant infraction of the law.


Strangely, 16 of Alice’s annuity checks, two of which show forged endorsements, disappeared. Alice’s daughter has a copy of a check with her signature possibly forged. The daughter’s attorney has been trying to obtain copies of the 16 other annuity checks for two years without success. The Probate Court of Cook of Cook County refuses to investigate these blatant infractions of the law. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com

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