Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse/Neglect

“Trust” is an important word — because if it does not exist, the world will cease to function and everything will come to a standstill. We trust many people to do their jobs every day and every hour of our lives. We entrust our precious children to the care of school bus drivers, who we believe will safely take them to their schools. We trust that the bus or train we board will take us safely to our destinations. And we entrust our elderly loved ones to the care of nursing homes, which we trust will provide the best possible care for them – care that we cannot provide with the limited resources in our homes.

From what I’ve observed, sadly and unfortunately, many nursing homes around the country are breaking that trust. They are not giving their patients the care they need and rightfully deserve. They are not staffing their nursing homes up to standards so their employees have the time, energy and resources to provide the best possible care to their elderly residents.

Here’s one of many examples of this outright breach of trust. According to a news article in the Chicago Tribune, the daughter of an 82-year-old woman sued a nursing home accusing the nursing home of not providing her mother with care and supervision needed to prevent the woman from falling. The incident, according to the lawsuit, led to Minnie Burger’s death. The nursing home was very well aware of Minnie Burger’s problems with falling Continue reading →

I recently came across an article in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat titled “Despicable People”. Obviously I was intrigued. But as I continued to read the article, I was hardly surprised to find out that it was about a Petaluma nursing home that was fined $100,000 for poor care and neglect of a 76-year-old woman.

According to the newspaper article, her husband and daughter placed Mary Keel at Pleasant Care Convalescent Home after the woman suffered a stroke. Now, our firm, Bisnar Chase Personal Injury Attorneys, has represented numerous victims of nursing home abuse and negligence. But this is one of the worst stories I’ve ever heard. Apparently, Keel’s sat in dirty clothes unchanged for weeks and was even allowed to eat her meals as she sat on soiled diapers! State investigators found 17 violations in that nursing home in connection with Keel’s death.

The facility is also reportedly one of 30 owned by Pleasant Care Corp., a La Canada-based company, which is in legal and financial hot water after many of its facilities were found to be far below state standards. And I’ll bet most of these sub-standard facilities were also understaffed. That’s how unscrupulous nursing homes, that don’t care whether people live or die, make their big bucks. They literally build their castles over the tombstones of those they were supposed to serve.

And it’s not as if they do it for free. Families pay good money to place their loved ones in these facilities. In fact, this article states that the Keels paid a “base rate of $5,400 per month.” And I know from personal experience, that more than money, it’s emotionally hard for families to make that decision.
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A jury in New Mexico, while acknowledging that a nursing home was negligent, awarded $54 million to the family of a woman who died in the facility, according to a news article in the Albuquerque Tribune. Most of the award – about $50 million – was in punitive damages.

Lori Keith, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of her deceased mother, was awarded the damages on June 28 after jurors agreed that ManorCare Inc., an Ohio-based nursing home corporation, neglected Keith’s 78-year-old mother to such an extent that she died. The lawsuit alleged that the nursing home tried to cover up Barbara Barber’s death by taking away sheets and other items from the room.

Her mother was supposed to leave ManorCare to stay with family barely a week after she died, Keith said. So when she got a phone call about Barber’s death, Keith said she became suspicious. Keith told the newspaper that what she wanted from the lawsuit was not money, but an admission of guilt from the corporation and justice for her mother.
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A lawsuit against a Fort Smith-based nursing home company can proceed as a class-action suit, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The lawsuit basically alleges that the Batesville Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Little Rock, “failed to live up to contractual and statutory obligations to take care of the basic daily needs of hundreds of residents,” according to a news article in the Dallas Morning News.

When you get down to the specifics of what went wrong in the Arkansas nursing home, it’s what we at Bisnar Chase Personal Injury Attorneys have been alleging in nursing home lawsuits for years, understaffing that leads to victimized clients. For example, this lawsuit states that over four years (2000 to 2004), the nursing home failed to provide proper care of its 489 residents. Why? Because, the suit says, they understaffed their facility.

On May 1, 2006, the courts granted class-action certification to the suit with respect to claims of statutory and contractual violations only, not claims of malpractice or personal injury. The defendants appealed that ruling. Attorneys arguing against granting the class-action certification said it would make it impossible to examine the issues in this case if each patient cannot be considered separately.
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It took a while for state officials to whip out a pen and write out a citation. Two years, to be precise. But this week they did it and fined Emmanuel Health Care Center of Norwalk $80,000 after investigators found that poor care by employees led to the death of a 54-year-old resident in August 2005, according to a news article in the Los Angeles Times.

A California watchdog group is criticizing state officials for taking too long to impose what is considered as the most severe penalty that can be imposed on a nursing home for negligence. If negligence by a nursing home took someone’s life, the state health department should act quickly to ensure that the facility corrects the problems and more importantly, to make sure it never happens again, said Michael Connors of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

The male resident, whose name was not released, reportedly died after suffering an injury to his forehead from a fall. Investigators determined that the resident was at risk for falls and died of “massive bilateral hemorrhage” from the head trauma. The Times reports that the nursing home’s parent company plans to appeal the citation. The death involving the Norwalk facility was the third that state investigators have attributed to negligent care at nursing homes owned by Pleasant Care Corp., California’s second-largest nursing home chain.
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Two wrongful death lawsuits were filed recently in Contra Costa Superior Court against Windsor Manor, a nursing home in Concord, California, as a result of the deaths of two elderly women. Surprisingly, the two women who died at Windsor Manor were the elderly Mothers of the married couple – Nancy and Jack Roberts.

And, just so you know this couple is not ‘sue-happy’! Jack and Nancy, married for 42 years, have never filed a lawsuit before in their lives, but when Nancy’s Mom, Doris 91, suffered a fatal fall in early 2006 Nancy had had enough. According to Nancy’s lawsuit, her Mom had a history of multiple falls at Windsor Manor, but their so-called skilled nursing staff neglected to provide a call light that was within her Mother’s reach, and none of the staff assisted her Mom to the bathroom, even though they knew she was prone to falling – leaving her to fend for herself.

Remarkably, Jack Roberts’ Mom, Nellie 93, passed away a year before Nancy’s Mom, at Windsor Manor. Jack’s lawsuit claims that his Mom’s death from aspiration pneumonia was preventable if the skilled nursing staff had been tending to his Mom’s condition. But, how could they when they were seemingly understaffed?
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Pat Torano, 89-years-old and partially paralyzed by a stroke, came to the realization that he could no longer take care of his 95 year old wife, Dorothy Torano, who was blind and suffering from some dementia, so he decided to seek help. Pat and Dorothy had lived in their dream home in Cardiff since 1964, and not wanting to leave the comfort of their home Pat and Dorothy contracted with Visiting Angels – but what they got was no angel!

What they got was convicted felon, Gina Trevino, who eventually tricked the couple into signing over the deed to their dream home. Later, in August after Trevino was arrested, but before the home could be put back in the Torano’s name, worried family members placed the couple in a nursing home as they could no longer care for themselves. Unfortunately, Pat Torano passed away in the cold confines of the nursing home on April 5th, never again to return to the dream home he and Dorothy loved for over 40 years. Trevino added insult to injury when she used Pat and Dorothy Torano’s credit to purchase three cars and also to charge thousands of dollars on the Torano’s credit cards.

According to Kim Collins, the Torano’s daughter, who supports new legislation for the caretaking industry, “She [Trevino] sounded like she genuinely cared. I was so naïve.” The San Diego Union Tribune reports that Trevino, who is 49, has served time in prison for child abuse and also for receiving stolen property and forging checks, and while Visiting Angels did a background check that went back 7 years, Trevino’s past felonies did not show up as they were more than 10 years old.

• As of April 24th Dorothy Torano still doesn’t have ownership of her Cardiff dream home.

• According to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office an ‘average’ of 37 caretakers have already been prosecuted between the years of 2001-2006 for stealing from clients.
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Many of us find ourselves in the ‘sandwich’ generation, so described because while we may still be parenting our own almost grown children we are also faced with the responsibility of caring for our parents. While for most of us it is an honor to help our parents find the very best lifestyle and living arrangements available it can still be a challenge to help our parents continue to enjoy independence and dignity while ensuring their safety and their health.

This subject is close to home for me. My mother was hospitalized this week due to a fainting episode, the origin of which is not yet diagnosed. This isn’t the first time she has had a fainting/falling incident. She has been living on her own in another state where she has her entire network of friends. She now is of the opinion that she needs to be close to her family, here in Orange County. However, she wants her independence and her own space. By fall we will have all three children in college.

Orange County, California is one of the most magnificent places to live whether you are 1 or 100, so it is no surprise that the OC also offers a variety of living arrangements for the feistiest senior, like my mom, as well as for those who may need various degrees of assistance.

In starting the process of finding the best place for my mom, we first had to determine, what level of care does she need? Handling this can be sticky, because it can surely cause hurt feelings and a feeling of the loss of independence, dignity and control on her part.

There are several options available. There are independent living apartment-style arrangements in an activity filled senior setting with meals provided. Then there are various degrees of assisted living where seniors retain their own living space and have whatever combination of other daily living assistance and monitoring is appropriate.
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A woman suffering from schizophrenia and other serious medical problems fell nine times in seven months before anyone at her nursing home acted to prevent further falls, according to an article published in The Arizona Daily Star posted on the Fox News Web site. That nursing home was fined $1,500 by the local health care agency that provides permits for nursing homes.

The woman’s chart also describes six weeks last fall when she was behaving wildly — yelling, pacing, threatening staff and taking off her clothes, among other things. But none of her caregivers connected that to the fact that they failed during those same weeks to give her, her medication 22 times. For failing to provide that necessary care, Santa Rosa Care Center paid a $1,500 fine, a minuscule amount in my opinion, considering the pain they’ve caused the victim and their family.

The woman was not identified in the health department’s report, released to the newspaper last week. In the health department’s online listing of nursing homes, Santa Rosa has a current quality rating of “B,” which means the center is 80 percent to 90 percent compliant with the department’s minimum quality standards. But the center’s violations illustrate the need for improvement at all levels of the elder-care system, said Stewart Grabel, ombudsman and director of elder rights and benefits at Pima Council on Aging.
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You better hope you don’t have any elderly relatives residing at the Rainbow Health Care Center in Bristow, Oklahoma! Why? Because Rainbow requires each resident to sign away their right to a jury trial, which means that even if Rainbow intentionally or negligently acts to harm your relativethey must have their injuries evaluated by ,arbitration.

As it turns out, maybe you don’t have to worry – yet, because U.S. Magistrate Frank McCarthy denied Rainbow’s request that they should legally be able to force all new residents to sign an agreement stating that they will not take Rainbow to court regardless of any intentional or negligent treatment they might receive from Rainbow’s staff.

There are a growing number of these types of cases, because nursing homes argue that they should be able to limit their liability to those who have been injured, and that arbitration is the way to go. But, as the baby boomers continue to occupy a larger percentage of the senior population, issues of reasonable and competent care and nursing homes seeking to avoid liability will only continue to loom over the courthouse steps.
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