Charity Hospital once stood tall as a historical landmark, serving as the second hospital to open in the U.S. and the first to treat a patient. For nearly 300 years, the hospital has provided crucial care to New Orleanians regardless of financial circumstances.

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated the facility, leaving the building abandoned downtown. 

Today, an ongoing legal battle over a century-old trust fund has left the decrepit building idle.

Trust fund legal battle

Upon his death in 1914, philanthropist Edward Wisner donated 50,000 acres of land and all subsequent income to the City of New Orleans. The land, which includes much of what is now Port Fourchon, has been extremely lucrative, servicing over 95% of the Gulf of Mexico’s energy production. 

The trust named the mayor of New Orleans as trustee and Tulane University, the Salvation Army and Charity Hospital, later acquired by Louisiana State University, as beneficiaries. Subsequent amendments added several other beneficiaries, including Wisner’s heirs. 

As trustee, Mayor Latoya Cantrell plays a major role in administering trust income to beneficiaries who are entitled to certain assets.

Wisner’s trust has been contentious from its conception. Fifteen years after his death, his wife and two daughters, known as the “Wisner Ladies,” hired a law firm in an attempt to annul the trust. 

According to Justin Schmidt, an attorney who formerly represented the City Council, the Wisner Ladies did not have the means to pay the law firm, so they agreed to include the firm in their share of the trust. 

“There are a bunch of heirs of attorneys that never had anything to do with this stuff, who are still getting money,” Schmidt said.  

In the original trust document, Wisner declared that the trust would expire after 100 years, in 2014, giving the New Orleans City Council full autonomy over Wisner land and trust income. However, its expiration and ownership have been challenged in a number of bitter legal battles between the City Council, Cantrell and the beneficiaries. 

City Council has served as the plaintiff in these cases, attempting to nullify Cantrell’s controversial 2020 Ratification Agreement, which extended the trust indefinitely, preventing the City Council from receiving the funds it argues it was entitled to under the conditions of the original trust. 

Before former Mayor Mitch Landrieu left office in 2018, he filed a summary judgment hearing in the Orleans Parish Civil District Court to clarify the trust’s expiration, among other concerns. 

The hearing, which ended in the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal for the , declared that the trust would end in August 2014, as initially stipulated in the original Wisner trust document. 

Despite this ruling, the trust money continued to be used by beneficiaries and Cantrell. Cantrell had access to about $3 million in Wisner funds per year to distribute to nonprofits, including one of her own creation. 

In response, the City Council filed a preliminary injunction against the Edward Wisner Trust Management Board. The Orleans Parish Civil District Court granted the motions in 2022, blocking the use or distribution of trust funds during litigation without court approval. 

The Edward Wisner Trust Management Board consists of Cantrell and a representative of each beneficiary, including Tulane Chief Operating Officer Patrick Norton.

Back-and-forth litigation upheld the City Council’s right to sue Cantrell, leading the City Council to amend its 2022 lawsuit. They now seek $49.5 million from Wisner’s descendants, LSU, Tulane and the Salvation Army that they argue should have gone to the city over the past decade.

According to Schmidt, New Orleans has lost out on millions in Wisner funding between 2015 and 2019 alone. 

“[New Orleans] can’t afford to lose $1 and […] the city has basically given away millions,” Schmidt said. 

In those four years, Tulane received $3.8 million in funding from the trust, which is used for general university support and financial aid for students, according to Tulane spokesperson Mike Strecker.

Tulane is endowed with a 12% share of the Wisner funds. In addition, 40% goes to the Wisner heirs, 35% to the City of New Orleans, 12% to LSU and 1% to the Salvation Army.

“Let’s go ahead and use some of this money for what it was originally used for, instead of just throwing it into the general fund or giving it away to these private entities,” Schmidt said. 

According to Claire Durio, executive counsel for the Edward Wisner Trust Management Board, a 1929 compromise that added Wisner heirs as beneficiaries holds evidence against the City Council’s alleged ownership. 

“The Wisner Trust Management Board, on behalf of the Edward Wisner Trust, opposes the claim of 100% ownership of the trust corpus by the City [Council] and seeks a declaration of the Court that all beneficiaries of the Edward Wisner Trust are principal beneficiaries and owners of the corpus of the trust,” Durio said. 

Executive counsel for the City Council, Adam Swensek, denied request to comment.

Schmidt said that a City Council victory could leave the Wisner funding up to the discretion of the City Council, meaning Tulane would no longer be entitled to its former 12% share. 

“Tulane and LSU have, for a long time, assumed that this money was effectively theirs,” Schmidt said. “They’ve been receiving it for so long that they feel entitled to it.” 

Charity Hospital caught in crossfire

In 2021, Tulane signed a long-term lease to occupy one-third of the building, working with a number of developers to transform Charity Hospital into retail spaces, laboratories, classrooms, dining facilities and up to 300 residential housing units. 

In November 2024, the City Council announced it would not contribute funding for Tulane’s multi-million-dollar redevelopment of the historic Charity Hospital building due to ongoing litigation. 

Tulane was slated to begin construction in 2025, but Strecker stated in a 2024 interview that the project cannot move forward without an explicit funding commitment from the city.

“Tulane University is fully committed to the goal of owning, developing and occupying at least 500,000 square feet of the Charity Hospital Building. But this project requires public support,” Strecker said. 

Despite former development company 1532 Tulane Partners spending over $70 million on the project, the abandoned Downtown facility has seen little progress. 

Schmidt said he’s not convinced by Tulane’s alleged reliance on city funding to continue the redevelopment. “It’s about how hard it is and the fact that [Tulane] doesn’t want to take on private debt or put their own equity into a deal,” Schmidt said.

Last fall, Tulane requested $30 million for the redevelopment from the 2025-2026 capital outlay budget from the state government, which provides funding for public improvement projects. 

The City Council and the Edward Wisner Trust Management Board filed multiple motions for summary judgment addressing the ownership of the Wisner Trust, which District Judge Kern Reese will hear on May 16.