HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. -- The family of an 81-year-old man whose body was found trapped between a security gate and elevator door at a medical building in Hallandale Beach last year is filing a lawsuit.

According to police, an employee at 2500 E. Hallandale Beach Blvd. discovered Myron Kafka's body while reporting for work on a Monday morning in July.

Police said Kafka's body was found in about a 14-inch space between the elevator and a metal gate intended to keep people from exiting on that floor. Police said the building is open to the public on weekends except for the third floor, so building managers put the gate in front of the elevator door during non-business hours -- even though they were cited for a safety violation and told to remove it in a 2004 elevator inspection report.

It appeared Kafka stepped out of the elevator with just enough room between the gate and elevator when the doors closed behind him, police said. He apparently wasn't able to reach the elevator buttons and became trapped. His cause of death was ruled a heart attack.

"And before he knew what happened, the door closed behind him and he was trapped for two days where he died," attorney Rick Ellsley said.

Ellsley represents Kafka's family, who are suing the building owner, management company and Kafka's doctors for negligence. A Local 10 investigation after the incident revealed that Broward County told building managers to take down the security gate in 2004.

Following that inspection, a manager wrote that the security gate was going "to be removed" in a signed document returned to the county.

Building officials said they assumed the gates were removed because a manager signed the form and decorative molding concealed the tracks for the gate. When asked whose signature was on the report, an employee at the building managers' office told Local 10's Roger Lohse, "I have no idea."

"The owner and the management company of this building thumbed their nose and, basically, ignored the county's requirement to remove those gates," Ellsley said.

Kafka was a father, retired psychologist and active member of his synagogue. The state attorney dismissed his death as an accident, but family members said they hope to find justice in civil court.