County Civil Rights Division To Assert "Prescription Pooch" Claim In Fair Housing Suit Against Condo Association On Behalf Of Elderly S. Florida Widow

In Deerfield Beach, Florida, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports:

• Phyllis Schleifer was so fragile and lonely, her doctors prescribed a medicine that weighs three pounds. His name is Sweetie, a Chihuahua. A prescription pet.
• But the Century Village widow has had nothing but emotional turmoil since 2008 when Sweetie moved into her no-dogs-allowed condo in Deerfield Beach. Condo officials refused to allow the pet, though Schleifer had a doctor's note saying she needed him as an "emotional service animal.''
• She says her condo retaliated against her and mistreated her, and made her neighbors pay for the legal fight. Someone — she doesn't know who — even pushed her down a flight of stairs, she alleges.
• Now, she's taken her case not to doctors, but to taxpayers. Broward County government will sue Schleifer's Ventnor "H" Condo Association on her behalf, commissioners agreed Tuesday.
• Schleifer, who was in a horrible car accident and then several years later, in 2005, lost her husband of 42 years, suffers "severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder,'' county documents say, a legitimate disability in the courts' eyes. Hence, the county says, she needs Sweetie much like a blind person needs a Seeing Eye dog.
• The unusual move to push a case onto the Broward taxpayer's bill is embedded in law, though few cases make it that far. County officials said Schleifer's is their first prescription pet lawsuit — an increasingly popular type of disability case. The case is expected to cost the county between $15,000 and $50,000.
• Broward Commissioner Ilene Lieberman worried Tuesday when the case came to commissioners' attention that Schleifer's case would spark a "field day'' of complainants asking taxpayers to pick up 100 percent of their legal costs, whether they're rich or poor or in between.
• The county has no choice, though, and is obligated to file the lawsuit because of its contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides funding for the arrangement.

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• The attorney Ventnor hired, Patrick J. Murphy of Deerfield Beach, sent her a letter demanding that she pay the condo's $16,752 legal fees, and threatened to file a lien against her condo. His letter threatened a lawsuit, county documents say. Those acts were among the things considered "coercing, intimidating, threatening, or interfering'' with Schleifer's exercising of her federal legal rights. Later, Murphy failed to sit down for mediation, according to county documents, which moved the case to litigation. Murphy declined to comment Thursday.

For more, see Broward to sue for Deerfield widow's right to live in Century Village condo with Chihuahua (County takes on "prescription pet'' case against condo).