Paul Morantz, at age 77; crusading lawyer faced off with variety of cults
Paul Morantz, a California lawyer who crusaded against brainwashing self-help gurus, crooked psychotherapists, and menacing cults, including one that nearly killed him with a rattlesnake, died Oct. 23 at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif.
He was 77. Mr. Morantz’s death was confirmed by his son, Chaz Morantz.
In taking on Synanon, the Church of Scientology, the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones, and a self-help group whose therapists beat their clients, Mr. Morantz fashioned himself as a modern-day Davy Crockett, defending righteous ideals even if his efforts put him in peril.
Mr. Morantz, his son said, would often cite a maxim attributed to the folk-hero frontiersman: “Be always sure you are right, then go ahead.’’
Just out of law school in the early 1970s, Mr. Morantz said he felt directionless. But one day in 1974, he received a phone call that spun his life, he later wrote, in “a direction I never would have suspected.”
The call was from his brother’s high school friend, a liquor store owner who said he knew an alcoholic being held captive at a nursing home in a government check scheme. Mr. Morantz decided to investigate, talking to nurses and others at multiple Los Angeles-area nursing homes.
Mr. Morantz discovered that elderly alcoholics were being sold for $125 to nursing homes by a man posing as a volunteer outreach counselor at the county’s drunk court. The nursing homes sedated the “captives,” as the Los Angeles Times called them, and collected government checks for their stays.
Mr. Morantz filed a class-action suit and won a $300,000 judgment. At least two of the people involved in the scheme served jail time for improperly referring patients to a health care facility for profit.
The “captives” case, Chaz Morantz said, launched his father’s legal reputation.
Mr. Morantz was praised in the media for his meticulous investigation and relentless legal maneuvering. Soon, clients were seeking him out.
In 1977, he was approached by a man whose life had been destroyed by Synanon, a California drug rehabilitation organization that evolved into a religious movement. Its founder, Charles E. Dederich Sr., viewed himself as a prophet and ordered his followers to undergo vasectomies and abortions and to physically attack enemies.
Mr. Morantz sued Synanon on behalf of several members who managed to escape. Three weeks after winning a $300,000 judgment, he reached into his mailbox and a rattlesnake sunk its fangs into his left wrist.
As paramedics treated him, four firefighters beat the rattlesnake with shovels and chopped off its head. They discovered the rattles had been removed, meaning there was no warning sound to alert Mr. Morantz of the reptile in his mailbox.
Dederich and two members of the group’s “Imperial Marines” hit squad were arrested a few days later on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They all pleaded no contest, with the followers receiving a year in jail and Dederich, then in poor health, receiving probation.
He represented a father who tried to get his son back from Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple, only to see those hopes end with the group’s mass suicide in 1978. Mr. Morantz also had many run-ins with the Church of Scientology, in court and in public.