Mayor Adrian Fenty's administration Wednesday defended a city decision to send a $2.2 million bill to a mentally ill man who gouged out his own eyes while under the District's care.
Peter Nickles, Fenty's general counsel, said in a letter dated Wednesday that the District was bound by law to bill Frank Harris Jr. for three decades of room and board at St. Elizabeths hospital.

"In this case [it] is mandatory," Nickles wrote in a letter addressed to District Council Chair Vincent Gray, "and not as a result of an unfair litigation tactic."

Wednesday's letter came in response to inquiries from District Council Chair Vincent Gray and District Council Member Phil Mendelson, D-at large, who wanted to know why the city slapped the guardian of Frank Harris Jr. with a $2.2 million room-and-board bill a few months after the guardian filed a negligence lawsuit against the District.

Nickles' letter raises the ante on a increasingly bitter public feud over the Harris case. Harris, a schizophrenic, was ordered into St. Elizabeths hospital in 1973 after a burglary charge. In early 2003, he began to complain that voices in his head were telling him to take his eyes out.

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He was supposed to be lashed to his bed and put under 24-hour care, but an orderly untied him in March 2003. Harris pushed the orderly away with one hand and gouged his eyes out in a few seconds.

Harris' longtime friend and guardian, Janice Motley, filed a suit in October 2005. Around Christmas, she received the gigantic bill.

Nickles' response did nothing to assuage the rising anger of Mendelson.

"It's morally offensive," Mendelson said. "They worked hard to find a paragraph of a law that hasn't been invoked in decades -- if ever.'"

More than 100 mentally retarded and ill people died inexplicably under the District's care during the late 1990s and early 2000s. When their families and friends threatened litigation, they were suddenly hit with backdated bills.

Fenty was one of the leaders against the practice, Motley's lawyers said Wednesday.

"He banged the gavel. He held hearings," attorney Joseph Cammarata said. "I've got to believe in his heart of hearts he's not paying attention to this."

Carrie Brooks, Fenty's spokeswoman, declined to comment.

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