October 30, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A New York hospital has agreed to stop using the name of one of its benefactors and to return a big portion of his bequest to settle a long-running legal battle with the donor’s widow. The settlement comes in a case that helped to establish the right of donors and their representatives to sue to enforce the terms of their gifts.
Under the agreement, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center will rename its Smithers Alcoholism Rehabilitation and Treatment Center, and the hospital will pay back nearly $6-million to another nonprofit group that will oversee a freestanding treatment center under the Smithers name.
From 1971 to 1983, R. Brinkley Smithers gave the hospital $10-million to establish and operate the center for research and treatment of alcoholism. But after his death in 1994, his widow, Adele C. Smithers, charged that St. Luke’s had violated the terms of her husband’s gift. Among other things, she said, the hospital had misappropriated about $5-million from the endowment fund set up by her husband, had sold the art deco townhouse on East 93rd Street where the treatment center was first housed, and was seeking to place the bulk of the $15-million proceeds into its general fund.
In 1998, Mrs. Smithers-Fornaci (who had since remarried) sued both the hospital and New York’s attorney general, both of whom had argued that she lacked the legal right to bring such a lawsuit (The Chronicle, November 28, 2002). But an appellate court disagreed.
The settlement announced this month directs that the $15-million proceeds from the building sale, minus the amount withdrawn to establish a new freestanding center, be restored to the Smithers Endowment Fund and used solely to underwrite substance-abuse programs at the hospital.
“This is a major victory for my late husband’s estate, and a complete vindication of the lawsuit,” said Mrs. Smithers-Fornaci, who added that she had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The Surrogate’s Court has ruled that she is entitled to recover reasonable fees and expenses, though the amount has not yet been determined.
“The hospital is pleased to have this matter behind it,” said Edward S. Kornreich, a New York lawyer who represented the hospital in the lawsuit. “St. Luke’s will continue to operate world-class substance-abuse programs, though the program will no longer be operated under the Smithers name.”
