Articles Posted in nursing home negligence

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A New York man has filed a nursing home negligence lawsuit against the facility where his mother died late last year after choking on a grilled cheese sandwich.

According to Syracuse.com, the woman was just 63-years-old, yet suffered from dementia. For this reason, she had to wear dentures to bite and chew solid foods. Despite this, in December, the staffer fed her a sandwich during a meal at which she did not have her dentures in. Patient unsurprisingly choked on the sandwich, aspirated and stopped breathing. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she died a week later from complications caused by the choking and aspiration of her food.

The wrongful death lawsuit filed by her son, the administrator of her estate, alleges the nursing home staff was negligent, careless and reckless in feeding his mother solid food without her dentures. As a result, his mother suffered conscious pain and suffering, as well as incurred medical expenses. He is seeking compensation for these violations of her rights, as well as punitive damages and attorneys fees.  Continue reading →

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Residents at a nursing home in North Dakota have settled with a hospital system following the largest outbreak of hepatitis C in recent U.S. history. However, the ongoing legal battle between the hospital and the nursing home where most of those involved were sickened will press on.

Courthouse News Service reports that the confidential settlement, which is still pending approval from the judge, stems from the outbreak in August 2013 in which 52 people were sickened. Of those, 48 were residents or former residents of a nursing home. It was the biggest outbreak of hepatitis C in more than a dozen years, according to data with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As for what caused it, that’s still in dispute. The 21 victims who were plaintiffs in this lawsuit allege that a hospital employee of an outpatient laboratory service reused needles and failed to follow infection control practices. State and federal authorities never exactly pinpointed the source, but they did say they suspected the nursing home residents were infected in connection with blood services.  Continue reading →

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State health officials in Massachusetts have issued a scathing report on the operations of a nursing home in Brockton, a suburb of Boston, following the death of a dementia patient in April. An initial inquiry into that patient’s death prompted investigation into another a month earlier, which opened the doors to a floodgate of problems at the facility – owned by a larger, troubled, for-profit company – that temporarily blocked the facility from taking on more patients or receiving federal reimbursement for patient care. 

Now, state investigators have released a 70-page report into the failures of the administrators and staffers at Braemoor Health Center which, according to The Boston Globe, hand’t properly trained its nurses or aides in how to revive a dementia patient who was suffering from a heart attack.

Further indignity occurred when nursing home staff didn’t even report the death to state health officials because, as nurses would later explain, the patient didn’t have any family. Investigators were later informed by a nursing home administrator that the clinical team at the center had actually made a conscious decision against reporting the death to officials, due to the negative press the facility’s parent company had received in recent months.  Continue reading →

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The enforceability of nursing home arbitration agreements often rests on: Who signed it? And furthermore, what authority did that person have to do so? 

It’s a key point in many nursing home abuse lawsuits because arbitration agreements prohibit residents – and their estates – from suing the nursing home in court. Instead, they are forced to seek resolution of any dispute from a binding arbitration. There are so many downsides to arbitration for the plaintiff, starting with the fact that arbitrators tend to decide cases more favorably toward the nursing homes. Beyond that, the proceedings aren’t public and arbitrators aren’t even bound to abide by the law.

Although arbitration agreements are binding contracts, the good news is that courts are analyzing them with a great deal more scrutiny than ever before. There are a few arguments that injury lawyers who handle nursing home abuse cases can approach this.  Continue reading →

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The management structure of nursing homes has grow increasingly complex in recent years, making it more difficult to identify all responsible parties.

This is no accident. 

In fact, as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in a 2009 analysis, nursing homes use these complex management structures as a way to confuse which entities might actually be responsible for the day-to-day care of patients and the policies set in place that affect everything from staffing to cleaning to nutrition programs to personnel issues. What this does is make it harder for residents who have been abused or neglected – or their surviving loved ones – from seeking recourse from the appropriate parties in civil litigation.

These management structures usually involve separating ownership of the real estate from ownership of the staffing company from ownership of the cleaning crews, etc. All these distinct sub-companies make it difficult to determine who holds the organizational assets and what the organizational approach is and who is actually delivering the services.  Continue reading →

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A resident at an Illinois nursing home reportedly admitted to fire officials and police that she intentionally set a fire at the facility because she was, “tired of the nursing staff trying to boss her around.”

That account is according to TV-KSDK, which reported the woman resided in the independent living section of the nursing home. She insisted she did not intend to hurt anyone, and thankfully no one was injured. The fire was set in two empty rooms. Ten patients had to be evacuated and smoke and water damage was sustained in a total of 13 rooms.

It’s unclear from the report how exactly she started the fire. While she was charged with one felony count of aggravated arson, suggesting that officers determined not only did she have willful intent but was mentally competent, the case sets off a few red flags for our nursing home abuse lawyers. Continue reading →

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Nursing home arbitration agreements – which have become mandatory for admission for many facilities across the nation – restrict patients’ access to the court system in the event of disputes arising as a result of poor care or criminal acts. They are a serious problem, as they serve to curtail the damage awards patients and their loved ones might otherwise receive.

Now, they are a topic of discussion among Congressional leaders in the House of Representatives. In a recent session, a number of Democratic leaders implored their colleagues for a solution that would overhaul this private system of justice that often favors the nursing home. The problem is arbitrators generally consider the nursing home their clients.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), asked his colleagues to pass a bill he had recently introduced that would prohibit firms from pushing civil rights lawsuits (including nursing home abuse lawsuits, employment discrimination lawsuits and others) into an arbitration forum. Johnson said arbitration clauses are especially damaging for women, minorities and vulnerable populations, such as those in nursing homes.  Continue reading →

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Nursing home arbitration agreements have become the new normal anytime a patient is admitted to a facility. These agreements are intended to limit the patient’s or family’s access to courts for resolution of disputes, such as those that arise as a result of nursing home abuse or nursing home neglect or nursing home negligence. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce or eliminate the complainant’s ability to collect damages from the nursing home. Arbitration agreements and arbitrators tend to be far more friendly to the business than the individual.

Although courts will uphold these agreements as they would any other contract, there is an emerging legal trend that involves finding these agreements either invalid or against public policy. There are a number of arguments that could be effective. One is to cite that the person who signed the document on the patient’s behalf had no legal authority to do so. Another, which emerged recently with the case of Estate of Novosett v. Arc Villages II, before Florida’s 5th District Court of Appeal in March 2016, was to argue the damage caps and elimination of punitive damages were against public policy and could not be severed from the rest of the agreement. The 5th DCA sided with the plaintiff in that case.

And that brings us to the most recent Florida nursing home arbitration agreement decision, which was also handed down by the 5th DCA in Estate of Reinshagen v. WRYP ALF LLC. Continue reading →

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Anonymous complaints of nursing home abuse or neglect would be banned under a proposed law being mulled by lawmakers in Illinois.

The bill, unsurprisingly supported by nursing home lobbyists, would prohibit anonymity, purportedly to slash the number of false complaints reportedly made to “Harass nursing homes.”

Rep. Mike Unes, sponsor of the bill, insists he is advocating for the most vulnerable because he wants to empower investigators to “help them get to the root of the problem.” By requiring people to leave their name and contact information if they wish to have a complaint investigated, Unes believes more legitimate complaints will be make it through the investigative phase. Continue reading →

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Authorities are investigating the death of an elderly Florida nursing home resident who may have died of possible sun exposure after he was reportedly left outdoors for an extended period of time. 

According to Health News Florida, first responders in Pinellas Park were called to a nursing home to treat a 65-year-old man who had sustained second-degree burns on his body. His abdomen was reportedly covered with blisters. Paramedics who arrived noted the man was severely dehydrated. Soon after, he went into cardiac arrest and died.

Detectives are trying to ascertain why the man was outside, how long he was outside for, whether he was being supervised and whether he may have been a victim of nursing home abuse and negligence.  Continue reading →

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