‘New York’: Legal Battle Between Board, Founder

A fight between the founder of a prominent nonprofit psychotherapy institute and its board has moved to the courts, reports New York magazine (November 7).

Trustees of the institute in September removed Albert Ellis, 92, from his job leading the institute that bears his name, asked him to repay money the institute spent on his health care, and shut down his weekly therapy workshops, the magazine says.

Mr. Ellis says he is being treated unfairly. “I hate what the people here at the institute are doing immorally and unethically. I think they’re fallible stupid people who are doing the wrong thing.”

What’s more, he called the institute’s executive director, Michael Broder, “a power freak,” adding, “it would be better if he were dead, dead, dead.”

Mr. Broder, for his part, says he is not interested in getting any more power over the institute and that he plans to step down once the legal battle over the institute ends.

Mr. Ellis developed an approach to therapy that was so popular, the magazine notes, that the American Psychological Association ranked Mr. Ellis as the second-most-influential psychotherapist in a century.

In 2003, after he faced serious health troubles, the institute began thinking about what would happen after he died, and that sparked disputes over an array of issues, the magazine says.

The board voted in September to remove Mr. Ellis from any professional duties at the center. Mr. Ellis then sued Mr. Broder and three other trustees, seeking to be reinstated at the institute. The board is considering a countersuit, and especially wants Mr. Ellis to repay medical bills of $300,000 that he charged to the institute.

“The board was spooked by the possibility that these funds could be considered ‘excess benefits’ and spark an IRS audit that could jeopardize the institute’s nonprofit status — and says it removed Ellis from the board primarily to prevent that from happening,” the magazine says. The board has offered, however, to finance another organization in which Mr. Ellis “could essentially do whatever he wants,” the magazine says.

The article is available online at http://nymetro.com.