A California appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit against the owner of 16 care facilities in Alameda County stating that patients can sue these nursing homes for failing to meet the state’s nurse-staffing standards, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The owner of the nursing homes in question, Orange County-based Covenant Care, argued that only state regulators have the authority to enforce a requirement that nursing homes provide each patient with 3.2 hours of nursing care per day. A Superior Court agreed and threw out the lawsuit. However, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco disagreed and overruled that decision.
Important Ruling
The Presiding Justice, Ignazio Ruvolo, said in the unanimous 3-0 ruling that state law gives its blessing to nursing home residents to bring action against the facility to “remedy violations of their rights.” Those rights include, according to the judge, the right to live in a facility that is properly and adequately staffed. The group of patients that is suing Covenant Care is seeking to prove that the facilities violated state staffing standards at least 35 percent of the time over a four-year period beginning in December 2006.
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