'He wanted to get better': Landmark Recovery rehab faces lawsuits, appeals state shutdown

William Harris was bouncing around the South Bend area’s homeless shelters for years before he stopped by his parents’ house one day and said he was finally going to rehab.

His parents, James and Donna Harris, said they made William leave home about three years ago as drug addiction tightened its grip on him. He was in his mid-30s, and both parents worried about enabling their son’s behavior by letting him stay. Since then, they had heard sparingly from him.

They knew William’s potential when healthy. A former cross-country runner who also played in the marching band, he’d graduated from Washington High School with honors and earned a degree in American history at Indiana State University. He’d held a few service jobs in the area after school. When his father began using a wheelchair, William spent a while caring for him.

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They felt a rush of hope on the day William packed up some belongings and told them where he was headed: Praxis of South Bend by Landmark Recovery, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility south of Mishawaka.

“He said he was closer to God,” his mother said, “and that he knew he could get better.”

On July 9, emergency responders found William in his room at Praxis. At 38, he was dead of an apparent suicide.

“It just, like, ripped my heart out,” James said of the coroner’s message about his son’s death. “Worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life: My son committed suicide. It’s out of character.

“He wanted to get better. I don’t know what happened at that place.”

Three deaths in a week prompt scrutiny of Landmark Recovery rehab

William Harris, whose death occurred late in the evening on a Sunday, was the third person to die that week at the embattled Praxis rehabilitation center, which opened last August in a former nursing home at 60257 Bodnar Blvd., near U.S. 20.

Two other patients of the facility were found dead of overdoses on July 3 and July 4. An additional overdose death occurred Nov. 9, police say.

More: License revoked for Landmark rehab center as former patients sue. Where will patients go?

Since July, Landmark Recovery, a company whose CEO Matt Boyle says he’s “on a mission to save a million lives in the next 100 years,” has faced lawsuits from former patients, rebukes from former employees and an investigation by local law enforcement.

On July 26, the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction revoked Landmark’s license to operate health care facilities, forcing the St. Joseph County facility and two others in the state to shut down indefinitely. The company has appealed the decision while forcing more than 300 employees to take 30-day furloughs.

A company spokesperson declined The Tribune’s request to interview Landmark executives, including Boyle.

But an email obtained by The Tribune’s reporting partner, WNDU, shows that the CEO is framing the backlash as a “war” of Biblical proportions. Boyle compares his company's struggles to the story of Daniel in the lion's den, wherein Daniel is spared because he's found blameless.

"I will stand and deliver for each of you in the arena each and every day," Boyle wrote in the email, "waiting to slay whatever enemy life throws in our way."

Here’s everything we know about the allegations against Landmark Recovery.

Landmark Recovery faces lawsuits from former patients, St. Joseph County coroner

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the company by former patients who claim they suffered severe injuries at two of Landmark’s Indiana facilities, where they went voluntarily to battle substance-abuse disorders.

Meanwhile, a St. Joseph County judge ordered Aug. 6 that Landmark must release withheld camera footage from July 3 and July 4, two days on which consecutive overdose deaths occurred, to the county coroner’s office. Coroner Patricia Jordan sued for the footage as part of her investigations of the three deaths at the facility from July 3 to July 9.

A lawsuit filed in July has swelled to include 37 former patients of the St. Joseph County facility. Represented by lawyers at Crossen Law Firm, of Carmel, Ind., plaintiffs claim endangerment, medical malpractice, negligence and punitive damages.

Conditions at the St. Joseph County facility were sordid and disorganized, the lawsuit alleges. Staff allegedly left “human wastewater” in hallways and failed to adequately feed patients, disburse medications and perform safety checks. One resident reports being denied access to a working toilet for 24 hours.

On Aug. 8, 10 former patients of a Landmark rehab in Bluffton, Ind., near Fort Wayne, sued the company with a litany of similar allegations of dangerous living conditions.

The residents claim that black mold grew in the facility, portions of the ceiling threatened to cave, and air conditioners sputtered. They allege shower drains clogged and insects infested rooms. Some went days without food or water, the lawsuit claims. When patients vomited or defecated in their rooms, the residents allege, they were sometimes made to sit in their own filth.

Patients also claimed Landmark knew of sexual assault among staff and residents but failed to intervene.

Gina Koeneman, a lawyer representing former patients, said the stories they tell portray an environment of gross negligence.

She stressed that Indiana needs drug rehabilitation facilities that serve low-income patients. But their lawsuits seek punitive damages to punish and deter companies like Landmark from operating facilities where vulnerable patients are harmed, not helped, on their way to recovery.

“Praxis did not provide a safe environment and a safe haven for people who were … wanting to get better,” Koeneman said. “They went there to get help, and yet they were sorely let down.”

Landmark has until later this month to file a response to the lawsuits and has declined to provide details about what went on in its facilities. In an email sent to Landmark employees obtained by WNDU, Boyle called the patients’ deaths “neither our fault nor preventable.”

The civil complaints coincide with an investigation by the St. Joseph County Police Department.

St. Joseph County sheriff calls for shutdown, and state agency responds

The July deaths of Harris and two other patients, 19-year-old Seth Jones and 46-year-old William Breda, ramped up scrutiny of the new facility. But St. Joseph County police say problems have persisted since Praxis opened in August 2022.

Landmark leaders called Praxis the largest treatment center in Indiana to accept Medicaid insurance for low-income patients. It’s one of five rehabs the company runs in Indiana. The others are in Indianapolis, Carmel, Bluffton and Ladoga.

The 160-bed facility was intended to provide inpatient rehab and mental health services, aiming to help more than 1,900 patients recover from substance abuse each year.

Kelsey Farver worked as a patient engagement specialist during the rehab’s first few months of business, she told The Tribune. A recovering heroin addict who had been in similar facilities as a patient and an employee, Farver sensed issues immediately.

Praxis was “severely understaffed,” she said. Prospective patients, sick from opioid withdrawals that were mandatory to enter inpatient rehab, waited in a lobby for hours to register, according to Farver. Residents stole drugs from medical carts, Farver said.

By the beginning of October, Farver had left her job there.

“I feared for my safety,” she told The Tribune. “Day 1, my first shift, I said, ‘Somebody is going to die here. 100% somebody is going to die at my facility.’”

In mid-July, St. Joseph County Sheriff Bill Redman asked the state to shut Praxis down. He cited more than 200 calls from the facility to area police and fire departments. Praxis had been the site of four deaths, about 10 overdoses, two rapes, a sexual assault and a stabbing, police say.

"I feel a void, an empty spot in my heart, for William," Donna Harris said of her late son. "I find I can't cry because if I start, I probably won't stop."

Landmark’s executive director resigned abruptly after William Harris' death in July, the company said in its appeal of the state’s decision to revoke its license. The director was one of two top administrators at the site to part ways with the company in the wake of the deaths. Praxis also paused all new admissions.

By the end of the month, Indiana regulators revoked the company’s license to run its local center, as well as sites in Bluffton and Carmel.

Landmark Recovery appeals the forced closures, says state regulators are in the wrong

On Aug. 4, Landmark filed an appeal asking Indiana’s Office of Administrative Law Proceedings to void the order to suspend its licenses.

The document, filed by Indianapolis attorney Dentons Greenebaum, says the state stripped the three facilities of their right to operate based in part on outstanding violations Landmark was working to address. Company leaders say these violations didn’t constitute emergencies.

They also take issue with the state’s decision to revoke licenses without any hearings or site visits in July, according to the appeal. Landmark claims there’s no basis for an emergency shutdown at its Bluffton and Carmel facilities.

As for the deaths at the South Bend campus, the company says “there is absolutely no proof — much less an allegation or finding — that any one of those deaths was the result of any harmful ‘conduct or practice in the operations of the facility.’”

Landmark notes that, during a May 18 inspection of the St. Joseph County facility, a reviewer from the Division of Mental Health and Addictions wrote that, “Overall, Praxis of South Bend appears to be in transition towards improving overall practices.”

The company also references letters from about 30 people — a blend of law enforcement, social workers and former patients — commending Landmark for its services. It mentions how Landmark’s Louisville facility was ranked the No. 1 addiction treatment center in Kentucky by Newsweek for the past two years.

Collectively, the closures mean there are 298 fewer beds for Medicaid patients in Indiana, and more than 200 Hoosiers are out of a job, Landmark says.

“If the July 26 Order is allowed to remain in place,” the company states, “it will cause irreversible harm to not only each of the three separate facilities and to Landmark Recovery, but Hoosiers of all types with substance use disorders and/or mental health issues who rely on Medicaid for care.”

Email city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Landmark Recovery rehab facility appeals state shutdown, faces lawsuits