3 sickened by Legionnaires bring suits

3 sickened by Legionnaires bring suits

By Michael Horowitz
 
BRONX, NEW YORK (BRONX NEWS)- Two men and a woman, who say that they caught Legionnaires’ Disease in Co-op City, are suing the housing company and the former managing agents in the northeast Bronx community.

The litigants are among eight individuals with Co-op City connections who contracted Legionnaires’  Disease late last year.

An additional two Co-op City shareholders living in the same building, one in 2012 and the other in 2013, caught Legionnaires’ Disease, the city’s Health Department reported in March of last year.

Those suing include Ronald Hines Jr., a 29-year-old man from Co-op City, and Ralph Motta, a 44-year-old man who worked at the Bay Plaza shopping center, both of whom have been seriously debilitated. Neither Motta nor Hines has been able to work since being sickened by Legionnaires’ Disease in December, Bronx News has been told.

Catherine Durso, a Bronxite who visited Co-op City in October of last year, is also suing the Riverbay Corporation, Co-op City’s housing company, and Marion Scott Real Estate, Inc., the former managing agents for the nation’s largest housing complex.

Durso, like Hines and Motta, has had her lifestyle seriously compromised as a result of the severe form of pneumonia that she contracted, her attorneys claimed in a lawsuit that they filed on behalf of her and her husband.

The cooling tower at Co-op City was, late last year and early this year, contaminated by the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ Disease, the city’s Health Department officials said in January.

Since that time, Co-op City’s cooling tower has been decontaminated to the satisfaction of Health Department officials. The cooling tower at the Bay Plaza shopping center was also contaminated with the Legionnaires’ Disease bacteria in late 2014, before being decontaminated.

Despite assurances from Health Department officials, a number of Co-op City’s civic activists remain concerned about Legionnaires’ Disease, insisting that there could be additional problems with the community’s domestic water system, which carries water to Co-op City’s apartment through a series of pumps and connections that go from one floor to another in individual buildings.

Health Department officials have stated that they are confident that the Co-op City cooling tower was the source of the Legionnaires’ Disease, which eight individuals associated with the community contracted in late-2014.

Legionnaires’ Disease is not communicable, meaning it is not spread from one individual to another. Rather, the disease is spread through mists, such as those that can come from contaminated showerhead or water faucets.