Woman Sues Building For Uptown Legionnaires' Outbreaks

UPPER MANHATTAN, NY — A woman who fell ill during a 2018 outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease outbreak in Washington Heights and Harlem is suing the development that city officials blamed for two outbreaks that sickened nearly 60 people.

Washington Heights resident Carmelita Jones was hospitalized for more than one month and is still undergoing treatment in an inpatient rehabilitation center after she contracted Legionnaires' Disease, lawyers Scott Harford and Jory Lange said in a statement.

The woman suffered from symptoms such as nausea, difficulty walking and talking, body aches and fever before being hospitalized, her attorneys said.

"This is one of the most severe Legionnaires' cases that I have seen," Harford said in a statement. "She hopes to be able to go home soon."

City officials traced the source of two fatal Legionnaires' Disease outbreaks in 2018 — one in July and the other in October — to cooling towers at the residential building the Sugar Hill Project on St. Nicholas Avenue near West 155th Street. The outbreaks sickened 59 people, killing two, city Health Department officials said in November.

The apartment complex was forced to shut down its cooling systems in October, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said in a November statement. Once the towers are re-activated, building management will be required to provide weekly samples to the city.

The 2018 outbreaks were the first time that one cooling tower has been linked to two separate Legionnaires' Disease outbreaks in the city, health officials said. Moving forward, the city plans to examine the design of the tower, convene a panel of water system engineers to advise the building's owners on properly designing safer towers and introduce stricter cooling tower regulations, officials said.

Lawyer Jory Lange, who specializes in cases involving food- and water-borne illnesses such as salmonella and legionnaires' disease, said: "The fact that invisible water vapor from a cooling tower can carry deadly pathogens like Legionella, and can cause so many hospitalizations and deaths, is alarming."

Photo of the Sugar Hill Project by Google Maps street view