Nursing Home's Conduct In Wrongful Death Case Angers Jury---- To The Tune Of $200 Million
After hearing the evidence in a wrongful death lawsuit involving an elderly woman's fall at a Florida Nursing Home, a jury became so enraged by the conduct of the facility--- that they chose to punish them the only way they could-- by handing down a huge verdict against the facility. The trial centered around the care--- or perhaps lack thereof-- that a 92-year-old woman received at Pinellas Park Care and Rehabilitation Center during an admission to the facility in 2004. It was during that admission, that the staff at the facility allowed the woman to wander in her wheelchair to...
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How Much Money Does Manor Care Really Make?
We’ve had a lot of discussion regarding the sizable nursing home negligence verdict in West Virginia against Heartland of Charleston and the parent company HCR Manor Care. If you haven’t heard about this landmark nursing home verdict, jurors awarded $91.5 million to the family of a patient at the facility who died shortly after her admission to the facility from complications related to dehydration and pressure sores. After unsuccessfully arguing that the verdict should be reduced based upon West Virginia’s caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases, lawyers for the nursing home behemoth have now taken a position that...
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Jury Blames Manor Care Nursing Home For Dehydration Death Of Patient
After just two hours of deliberation, a West Virginia jury has awarded a family of a deceased woman $91.5 million in damages against Heartland of Charleston, a Manor Care facility. The verdict is comprised of $11.5 million in compensatory damages and $80 million in punitive damages against the facility. The nursing home lawsuit alleged that Heartland's failure to provide life's elemental needs--- food and water-- contributed to her death just weeks after her initial admission. Allegations of nursing home neglect Like many families coping with a family member's declining health, Tom Douglas knew it was time for his mother needed...
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Jury Punishes Hospital With Verdict In Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Where Patient Developed Bed Sores During Admission
Have you seen a bed sore? If you haven't, advanced bed sores are truly horrific conditions that are perhaps the most gruesome example of institutional neglect. However, particularly when there are photographs of a gaping wound on a patient's buttocks or heels, many of these cases seem to miraculously get get resolved prior to when they get presented to a jury. Perhaps some of the risk managers and lawyers defending these nursing homes and hospitals are providing useful advice to their clients to: settle, settle, settle? Maybe the 'settle, settle, settle' message got confused in a recent case involving the...
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New Illinois Court Decision Holds That No Punitive Damages Can Be Awarded In Survival Actions Involving Nursing Home Negligence
Some of the substantial verdicts we have recently discussed at the Nursing Homes Abuse Blog here and here involve jury verdicts with punitive damage components. While some of these verdicts may seem excessive, most of the time the damages are awarded because the facilities conduct was so extreme that it deserves to be punished. In most jurisdictions, the punitive damages can only be pursued after a judge has approved the punitive damage portion of the lawsuit. Unlike compensatory damages, that compensate an injured party, punitive damages are intended to punish the wrongdoing facility. While punitive damages may be awarded against one...
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Nursing Home Chain Hit With Landmark Verdict In Under-Staffing Class Action Lawsuit
I guess there's probably a lot a screaming and yelling going on at the Skilled Healthcare Group (SKH) headquarters in California. Perhaps the anger derives from the miserable looking financial chart for the company showing a whopping 75% decline in price per share in one day! Another portion of the companies anger is probably being misdirected at the lawyers who defended the company in a class action lawsuit brought against Skilled Healthcare based on systematic under-staffing at 22 nursing homes owned by the corporate giant. Really, the only people to blame are the managers in the company who intentionally chose...
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$5 Million In Punitive Damages Awarded To Widow In Bed Sore Case Against Nursing Home & Hospital
A Philadelphia jury awarded $5 million in punitive damages to the widow of a man who died from bed sores he developed during a hospitalization and then worsened during a subsequent nursing home admission. The case, believed to be the first of its kind in terms of awarding punitive damages against a nursing home in Philadelphia courts, was allocated: $1.5 million against Jeanes Hospital and $3.5 million against Hillcrest Convalescent Home. According to widow's lawyer, Steven R. Maher, Jeans Hospital failed to diagnose the man's urinary tract infection that contributed to the development of bed sores (also referred to...
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New York Jury Punishes Nursing Home Where Man Develops More Than 20 Bed Sores
It never fails to amaze me. Frequently, when I tell people about some of the cases I work on involving bed sores, I only to get a 'so what?' reaction from them. Are the people who surround me heartless? Maybe some of them (just joking, honey)? Nonetheless, the reality is that most people have no idea what a bed sore truly is or the catastrophic consequences that my arise after a person develops them. When people actually see the gruesome photos of rotting flesh on a person's backside hear about the ongoing medical procedures that are necessary to heal the...
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Huge Nursing Home Verdict Tossed Out Because Parent Company Did Not Have Adequate Control Over The Facility
Yesterday, we discussed the nursing-home-name-game, how large nursing home chains attempt to shield themselves from liability by creating a complex array of subsidiary companies and messy corporate structures. Today, we are seeing the fall-out created by this complicated game of corporate re-organization-- how despite that fact that a large corporation makes decisions with respect to operation of a facility, and even derives profits from the facility, it can evade responsibility by re-arranging its corporate structure. In 2007, a New Mexico jury rendered a large verdict ($53 million) against ManorCare after they heard how Barbara Boxer, a patient at a ManorCare...
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Failure To Conduct Adequate Pre-Employment Criminal Background Search Costs Assisted Living Facilty $750,000
A jury awarded $750,000 to a disabled man who was a resident at Cote De Neige Home for Adults after he was sexually assaulted by a worker at the facility. The lawsuit was brought against the assisted living facility for their failure to conduct an adequate pre-hiring background search before hiring a certified nursing assistant. Junious Boyd Batten, the CNA who was allegedly involved in the sexual assault, currently faces five counts of forcible sodomy, three counts of carnal knowledge and one count of abuse and neglect for incidents that occurred between 2006 and mid-2007 while he was employed...
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