The lawyers for a mental patient who gouged out his eyes while in city care and was later billed $2.2 million for room and board said they would file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the District today, escalating an already ugly legal battle.

Frank Harris Jr. plucked his eyeballs out in the midst of a violent delusion in early 2003, while he was supposed to be guarded by staff at St. Elizabeths hospital.

A few weeks after Janice Motley, his longtime family friend and guardian, filed a negligence lawsuit against St. Elizabeths, the city presented her with the $2.2 million bill it

said covered his meals and accommodations dating back to the 1980s.

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Motley’s and Harris’ lawyers have lobbied Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration to drop the bill, calling it an obvious attempt to quash litigation for the city’s own negligence. But the Fenty administration has claimed that it’s bound by law to recover back bills when previously poor patients come into money — like a lucrative negligence suit.

Frustrated, the lawyers told The Examiner that they would file a federal civil rights suit today, alleging the city is “selectively enforcing” laws that allow it to recoup old bills from erstwhile poor patients who obtain money.

“It defies credulity,” lawyer Joseph Cammarata wrote to Peter Nickles, Fenty’s lawyer. “We doubt that any bill would have been sent if Mr. Harris did not file a lawsuit.”

Harris has been supported by D.C. Council Member Phil Mendelson, D-at large, and Chair Vincent Gray, D. Both council members reminded Fenty that he had blasted the previous mayor when the city sent backdated bills to the families of those who had died at St. Elizabeths when they were threatening wrongful death lawsuits.

Mendelson on Tuesday told The Examiner he was disgusted that the Harris case had been allowed to degenerate so far.

“The Mayor’s refusal to disavow the original bill has led directly to a challenge based on constitutional grounds,” Mendelson wrote in an e-mail to The Examiner. “This administration and their lawyers managed to jump from the frying pan, directly into the fire.”

Melissa Merz, spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office, said that Cammarata’s claims of selective enforcement were “simply untrue.”

“Our preliminary research has identified 22 instances in which the District billed forensic patients,” Merz wrote in an e-mail to The Examiner.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com

smccabe@dcexaminer.com