Florida: Four generations of Jewish family sued by Bradenton Condominium Association

Some things are definitely stranger than fiction and beyond imagination … but try to imagine a nine-year-old girl, barely able to read, being sued by a condominium association for the debts of her great-grandfather, deceased five years ago. If you know the Heritage Village West Condominium Association (HVW) in sunny Bradenton, Florida, perhaps you might ask one of its proud Board members or their attorney, Scott Petersen of Becker & Poliakoff, for the reasoning behind their demands for little Kenna and her three siblings to pay HVW for the unpaid maintenance fees of their beloved “Big Papa,” Holocaust Survivor Al Katz.

In a case full of travesties, the foreclosure against Al Katz’s modest apartment-sized condominium is mind-numbing! First, it was HVW that helped, both in and out of court, to put and keep Al Katz into a frightful guardianship, in which he was forced to abandon his much-loved HVW condominium to live in a crowded room at Casa Mora nursing home behind layers of security in the dreaded lockdown unit, where screams resound day and night and delicate, precious elders are held in isolation from the rest of the normal world.

At Casa Mora, Al became septic and unresponsive after weeks of bleeding into his catheter bag and three days of escalating fever, despite repeated alerts to Casa Mora staff and to Al’s guardians by his daughter, who had no legal rights at the time to order proper care for him. Through Divine blessing, Al, the Holocaust Survivor, survived many months of deep-reaching bedsores and gradual recuperation from sepsis at age 89. When his daughter finally obtained legal rights from the Manatee County Probate Court to care for her Dad, Al returned to his condominium, without one visit or phone call from any of his neighbors at HVW, where he had lived for 26 years.

Al was HVW’s only Jew, and he was now a very lonely, ostracized Jew, who had served on the HVW Board in his prime and donated dozens and dozens of hours to helping his neighbors, one of whom had just recently testified in court that Al belonged in the nursing home, not with his family in his own condominium.

Through Al’s expensive guardianship, his liquid assets were speedily consumed to pay multiple attorneys and his professional guardian, who refused to file or pay Al’s income taxes. At the end of his lonely life, Al was bereft of funds and friends and thrust into dire debt through no fault of his own. In the Holocaust, Al had lost everything, and in guardianship, his history had repeated itself.

Al’s guardianship account held by professional guardian, Herbert Schimmel, had zero dollars in it for Al’s estate to receive. Al’s daughter, therefore, spent her own money by the scores of thousands to administer his estate, but HVW maintenance fees were unpaid. When HVW filed to foreclose on Al’s condominium, Al’s daughter defended against the legal action.

After years of legal defense against HVW, the Board and its attorney suddenly decided not only to sue Al, of Blessed Memory, but also his entire extended Jewish family – Al’s daughter, son-in-law, son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter, three great-granddaughters, and one great-grandson – and HVW then obtained a court order against them from Manatee County Judge Robert Farrance for Al Katz’s alleged debts, despite the fact that only two of these persons had ever been served with the foreclosure Complaint and notice of any court hearings in four years’ time. Simply put, HVW was able to successfully sue four generations of a family, including multiple minor children, to pay for the debts of their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather without ever serving most of them with court documents or allowing them any due process to defend themselves!

When this incidental matter was brought to the attention of HVW’s attorney, Scott Petersen simply served some of the family members, all located out of state, with the Complaint three years after the deadline for process service had elapsed, without blinking either of his eyes.

It was Mr. Petersen who also served Al’s daughter and son-in-law with foreclosure documents on Rosh HaShonah, the holy Jewish New Year, and immediately began pressuring their attorney to set his foreclosure motion for imminent hearing. In the same time frame, Al’s family, staying in his HVW condominium, received anti-Semitic hate mail from an HVW resident, who proudly used his email address to threaten the only Jews at HVW, warning them:

Be warned, I’ll be keeping an eye on you. The last thing you want to do is make an enemy of me….

He continued, saying:

… don’t give me any of this holocaust survivor stuff. I don’t want to hear it…. These men and women led their lives and now that it’s coming to an end you want to pretend that there is more for them? Let them be and let them greet their [M]aker..Not to be crass, but if anyone of these survivors, most in their 90’s has any hope of leading any sort of life beyond bedpans and feeding tubes, let them go so they can be one with the [L-]rd [A]lmighty.

By the way, you make yourselves look foolish with this survivor crap.

Although Al’s family sent excerpts of the anti-Semitic emails to dozens of HVW residents, agents, and Board members, not one of them ever spoke against the hate mail sent by their non-Jewish neighbor against their Jewish neighbors.

The hate mail was preceded and followed by repeated incidents of vandalism to Al Katz’s yard, destruction of plants, tossing litter on the property, and dumping garbage cans in the yard for weeks – all without objections raised by any of the 167+ HVW condominium owners and their condominium management company, DellCor.

Just as HVW’s stone entry sign has collapsed under its own weight, the burden of the sins and crimes committed by HVW’s Board, agents, and residents is toppling and crushing HVW’s future to the ground. The results of greed and hate are aptly symbolized by the crumbling stone marker that greets residents and guests alike with a frown and scowl as they enter and exit the nearly-Jew-free zone.