Keith Myers, the embattled former president of MorseLife Health System, has filed a blistering lawsuit against his former employer for firing him in January, claiming he is owed severance pay because he was wrongly terminated from the West Palm Beach facility.
Then, after his employment was terminated, Myers said he became the subject of malicious comments by people who falsely accused him of engaging in theft, fraud and misuse of MorseLife’s funds, according to the complaint filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.
These accusations were made despite the fact that an investigation conducted by MorseLife showed neither wrongdoing nor fraud, the 81-page complaint said.
Why ex-CEO at MorseLife alleges civic, business leaders defamed him
The April 29 lawsuit named more than a dozen leading business and community figures whom Myers alleged made defamatory comments about him after his January firing.
The disparaging conversations took place at three fundraising events held in the past couple of months, said Arthur Schofield, Myers’ lawyer.
Schofield said the comments were made in “cocktail chatter” and in private conversations “with as few as three individuals and up to seven.” The lawsuit contains paragraphs of alleged comments by individuals named in the complaint.
The lawsuit marks the first time Myers publicly has responded to the uproar that beset the senior care facility starting in January 2025. That is when an anonymous letter first raised concerns about “excessive” executive pay, tax law compliance and potential for a whistleblower complaint.
The letter led to a months-long Palm Beach Post investigation, published June 2025, into the non-profit’s management compensation practices.
The Post investigation revealed the charitable non-profit’s board paid a private management company owned by Myers and Chief Financial Officer Randy Wolan $36 million in compensation during a four-year period, federal tax records show.
That total includes $10.3 million paid to the company, Amplifii Management LLC, during the 2023 fiscal year, the last year for which federal tax records are publicly available.
Some philanthropists and residents of the senior-care facility were stunned by the revelation.
Documents attached to Myers’ complaint provide new details of the pay arrangement, describing how MorseLife initially paid Amplifii 5% of all MorseLife gross revenues, including money from charitable donations.
The executive pay uproar caused MorseLife board leaders last summer to change the way they compensate Myers and Wolan.
Then, in December, The Post revealed further fallout from the center’s 2020 COVID vaccine scandal that had allowed wealthy donors to receive some of the nation’s first vaccines ahead of the vulnerable patients and staff members for whom they were meant.
The Post reported in December that Myers had recently agreed to pay $250,000 to settle an investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
After the revelation, MorseLife suspended Myers from his post in December, court records say. The non-profit subsequently fired Myers in January, his complaint said.
Schofield said Myers filed the lawsuit because MorseLife “ruined Mr. Myers professionally and personally all in an effort to cover up its own wrongdoings.”
Schofield added: “Those actions further resulted in malicious lies being freely and openly shared in the community. This lawsuit is just one step forward for Mr. Myers’ to regain his reputation and to set the record straight.”
Myers’ lawsuit also said he was wrongly made a scapegoat for the 2020 vaccine scandal, which he said was done at the direction and approval of the MorseLife board.
The accusations “were manufactured to protect the Board of Directors and those actually responsible for disseminating the vaccine,” Myers’ lawsuit said.
A MorseLife spokesman on April 30 called Myers’ lawsuit allegations “baseless and without merit” and said the lawsuit will be “vigorously defended.”
Which community leaders are named in the Myers lawsuit?
Individuals named in the complaint are some of Palm Beach County’s most prominent leaders in the philanthropic, business and Jewish communities.
Some are current or former board members of MorseLife or The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County. Others are members of the Palm Beach Country Club, an exclusive club in the Town of Palm Beach that became popular with Jews during the 1950s when other clubs in the resort town would not admit them because of their religion.
Among those named in the complaint are MorseLife Chairman David Mack and board member Terri Sriberg. Business leader and philanthropist Bill Meyer is named, as are real estate broker Paulette Koch and entrepreneur David Brodsky.
Also named are Jewish Federation Chairman Barry Berg and President Michael Hoffman, as well as former MorseLife board members Michael Margolis and Sandy Sirulnick. Philanthropists Ellen Levy, Susan Ross, Nikki Harris and Francine Kittredge also are named in Myers’ lawsuit.
In a May 1 interview, Meyer said he was “shocked” to see his name in the lawsuit and said the former CEO’s allegations were “fabricated.”
“I have never been involved with MorseLife in any capacity,” Meyer said.
Meyer noted he has stayed away from MorseLife because he is a competing developer in the caregiving field, having built the Devonshire senior living facility in Palm Beach Gardens.
In a brief telephone call, Ross said she knew nothing about the Myers lawsuit and was not going to comment. “I don’t know him,” she added.
Hoffman, the Jewish Federation president, said he and Federation Chairman Berg would not comment.
Other individuals did not respond to phone calls, emails or texts seeking comment.
MorseLife is longtime center for senior care
MorseLife, founded in 1983 as the Jewish Home for the Aged, is an important non-profit for the senior community.
The charity provides health care, housing and supportive services for seniors living in its independent and assisted-living, rehabilitation and memory-care facilities, its website says. The services can cost residents several thousand dollars per month, depending on the level of care required.
The 52-acre campus is just south of the CACTI Park of The Palm Beaches.
Myers led the organization for 18 years starting in 2007. During his tenure, he turned the non-profit from a $31 million operation to a $300 million full-service care entity, his lawsuit said.
In 2018, MorseLife’s executive committee voted to pay Amplifii to manage the facility starting in 2019, the lawsuit said. Amplifii was owned by Myers and a former executive, and more recently, Myers and Wolan, state records show.
The 2018 executive committee consisted of Mack, Sriberg and Stephen Levin, a philanthropist and former chairman of Gold Coast Beverage Distributors, according to records attached to the lawsuit.
MorseLife’s luxury independent living facility, Levin Palace, is named after Levin.
Although MorseLife initially paid Amplifii a cut of charitable donations, in 2024, MorseLife’s compensation committee amended the agreement to exclude charitable contributions, starting June 1, 2024, court documents say.
That committee again consisted of Mack, Sriberg and Levin, the documents said.
The committee also slightly modified the agreement to limit pay to Amplifii to 3.5% if gross revenue was between $250 million to $350 million, records show.
Despite the committee’s endorsement of the Ampliffi arrangement for years, MorseLife’s board of directors changed its compensation practices in 2025 and ended its contract with Amplifii after The Post article.
Also in 2025, MorseLife’s board stopped tying executive pay to the charity’s overall revenue.
In emails explaining the changes, David Mack, MorseLife’s chairman, told donors and residents that the arrangement was “directly linked to the organization’s revenue growth — which increased by an extraordinary 165% over the past five years.”
The revelation of the arrangement by The Post’s investigation stunned philanthropists, non-profit experts and the community at large. Charities typically do not tie compensation to revenue the way a for-profit company does, experts in non-profit operations said.
After MorseLife ended its agreement with Amplifii, records attached to the lawsuit show that MorseLife instead agreed to pay Myers $952,000 for a six-month period from July to December 2025.
Myers’ 2026 salary was listed as $3.4 million, the records show. But Myers was fired before he could serve that term.
In his complaint, Myers singled out several individuals, including Mack, MorseLife’s chairman, for alleged defamation after he was ousted from the non-profit.
Myers’ lawsuit claimed Mack defamed him by saying Myers “misspent $36 million…He took away things that were important to residents and then he cost us millions from donors because he alienated them all. The entire organization was about to implode.”
Myers points finger at MorseLife board for vaccine scandal
MorseLife’s 2020 COVID vaccine practices play a major role in Myers’ lawsuit.
In 2022, the U.S. Justice Department announced that MorseLife would pay a $1.75 million settlement for its alleged actions surrounding the COVID vaccines. The Justice Department said MorseLife pursued donors willing to give money to the nonprofit in exchange for a shot.
At the time of the settlement, a MorseLife spokesperson said the non-profit denied the allegations but chose to settle “to avoid the expense and distraction of protracted litigation.”
According to Myers’ lawsuit, “it was Board member David Mack and his brother, William Mack, who created the problem by including his friends and colleagues, some less than 60 years of age, from the Palm Beach Country Club in the vaccination clinic being administered by MorseLife.”
Then in September 2025, HHS said Myers agreed to pay $250,000 to settle an investigation into the COVID vaccine matter.
Myers’ lawsuit said he was “falsely accused” of misappropriating MorseLife funds to pay the fine, which he said was paid by MorseLife’s insurance carrier.
Alexandra Clough is a business writer at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aclough@pbpost.com. X: @acloughpbp. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: West Palm Beach’s MorseLife, community leaders sued by ousted ex-CEO
Reporting by Alexandra Clough, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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