Son of nursing home COVID victim sues Cuomo, DeRosa for wrongful death
A man whose Korean War veteran father died after catching COVID-19 in a Brooklyn nursing home has filed a class action wrongful death suit against disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his former top aide Melissa DeRosa.
Daniel Arbeeny, 59, an outspoken critic of Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic, claims his dad contracted the coronavirus and died because of a New York state directive that nursing homes admit COVID-19 patients. The order was implemented in March 2020 by the state health department.
“This policy of mandatory admission, non-testing and comingling of nursing home residents constituted reckless endangerment by all of the Defendants,” according to the suit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.
In a phone interview with The Post, Arbeeny said the suit — which also names the state and ex-Health Department boss Howard Zucker as defendants — was about holding state officials to account. It’s also an effort to get justice for the families who had relatives die in nursing homes.
“It’s a lot of people that are hurting and still hurting now,” Arbeeny said. “Justice has to be served.”
Arbeeny’s father, Norman, died at the age of 89 in April 2020, after he developed coronavirus symptoms during his stay at the Cobble Hill Health Center, a Brooklyn nursing home, the suit states.
He was tested for the virus soon before his death, according to the filing. Hours after he died, the test returned a positive result for COVID-19.
The suit notes that within a week of the directive being implemented, a field hospital in Central Park, the USS Comfort and the Javits Center could have all accepted coronavirus patients.
“Through other regulatory actions. Defendants Cuomo and other New York State Health Officials rendered it near impossible [for] those facilities to be available for COVID-19 patients,” it claims.
Arbeeny, a New York native who lives in Cobble Hill, pointed to the fact that a British court ruled this week that the UK’s nursing home policy, which was similar to the Empire State’s, was illegal.
“Cuomo knew what he was doing,” Arbeeny told The Post. “Wrongful death is wrongful death, whether it’s the state or not. It’s wrong. The government needs to make amends for this.”
His father, a lifelong Brooklynite, served overseas during the Korean War and was a fixture in the Cobble Hill neighborhood, where the Arbeeny family ran a store for many years.
After his dad’s death, Arbeeny gave a number of press interviews, questioning Cuomo’s directive on nursing homes – and suggesting the number of coronavirus deaths in New York had been undercounted.
In response to the accusations, Cuomo went on the defense and dismissed the complaints as a political hitjob, the suit states.
“Defendant Cuomo publicly ridiculed individuals such as the Plaintiff characterizing their views as ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘politically motivated,’ the court document says.
The suit highlights reports, including one by Attorney General Letitia James, which concluded that the nursing home coronavirus death count had been undercounted by as much as 50 percent.
In a statement, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said the order had no effect on COVID outbreaks in nursing homes.
“For all the emotion and politics generated around this issue, the facts are that both the AG and the Assembly critically examined this and concluded that the DOH March order had nothing to do with introducing COVID in nursing homes — also, as previously stated, Ms. DeRosa has nothing to do with this directive,” Azzopardi said in an email.
“We expect any fair hearing in a court of law will also bear this out,” he added.
The Health Department declined to comment and a rep for Zucker did not immediately respond.
Arbeeny filed the lawsuit on his own after consulting a lawyer, but is not being represented by anyone in the civil action. He is seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial.
“I’m not going to let this go. We can’t,” he told The Post. “I can’t let this happen again.”
Additional reporting by Zach Williams
